Sporty Shots at low light

October 13, 2005 11:14 AM

Okay, I know it's been asked MANY times here but I have a specific question about shooting a picture in low-light settings.

So here is the set up, I am taking pictures of a sports event at a skating rink which will have nothing more than tungsten lighting. I've got an external flash, I can fstop down to 2.6 on either a 50mm or 3.5 with a 24-85mm.

What I'm trying to figure out is the best way I can get the crispest shots I can with the most ambient lighting possible. My problem comes in that I have a hard time bouncing light off the ceiling and I've never been able to get a decent custom white balance.

I've tried Arpeture priority and Shutter as well, but something tells me I am messing up somewhere. I try NOT to shoot at 1600, but that seems to be my best bet if I want to catch an action shot.

For some reference:
I'm using a Canon Rebel
(lenses were already mentioned)
Tripod
External Flash

posted by Hands of Manos to sports, hobbies, & recreation (15 comments total)

oh heh...the question is:

Knowing all this, what is the best way I can take the best picture at this event? I can get really close so that's not a problem at all.
posted by Hands of Manos at 11:15 AM on October 13, 2005

You already seem to know what to do. If that's failing you, then you've reached the limits of your equipment...

Overview: Aperture as large as possible (2.6). ISO speed as high as you're comfortable with (go 1600 if you must, noise can be cleaned up more easily than motion blur). If your subject is close enough, the flash should be all you need to solve these problems. From the sound of it, the flash is not close enough to help. Oh, and don't worry too much about white balance while you're shooting. Shoot raw images and you can fix the white balance any time on your computer.
posted by knave at 11:21 AM on October 13, 2005

Forget bouncing the flash. The flash is too feeble to light up a whole rink off the distant ceiling of a rink. In fact, forget using the flash at all; it doesn't match the color of the ambient lighting and it'll cause distant objects to be underexposed. MAYBE if you put a filter of some sort on the flash to make it match tungsten. (Are you sure the rink is lit with tungsten? Usually they use something like mercury vapor lighting. That's even weirder to take photos in and would explain your difficulties getting a good white balance. Well, that and the fact that you're using the flash and so have a mixed lighting situation.)

You definitely want ISO 1600. There's a hack that'll actually let you do 3200, which might be useful, though you'll want to do some post-processing to take care of the noise. Or else you can intentionally underexpose by a stop, shoot raw, and then correct later in Photoshop.

Ideally you will want faster lenses. 2.6 is not really that quick. A 50mm f/1.4 or f/1.8 or 85mm f/1.8 is going to get you much better results. But with the larger aperture comes the difficulty of keeping what you want in focus. Automatic focus is going to be kind of iffy in such low light so perhaps you should practice with manual. Which will be tough considering the Rebel has a small, dim viewfinder with no real focusing aids.

Overall, it's natural you're having trouble with this; it's a difficult shooting situation.
posted by kindall at 11:30 AM on October 13, 2005

Ideally, you'd use the f/2.6 50mm lens with aperture priority set to f/2.6, in order to get as much light into the camera as possible. Remember that you can always crop later if your subject ends up being too small on the frame. The extra magnification at 85mm will be more than outweighed by the crappy aperture you'll be stuck with; at 85mm you'll probably be limited to f/4.5 or so on that lens. At f/2.6, you will have a somewhat shallow depth-of-field, which means you'll have to be careful with focus, and you'll have a somewhat blurred background.

Whether you have to go to ISO 1600 or can stay at 800 or lower depends entirely on how much light there ends up being. When set to aperture priority, the camera will tell you the shutter speed it's going to use to make a good exposure. Depending on how much movement there is in your subject, you may be able to get away with a 1/100 or even 1/60 exposure if movement isn't that dramatic, or you may need 200 or more if you're trying to catch quick action. I sometimes underexpose by 1/3 or 2/3rds of a stop in order to get a faster shutter, and I don't mind the somewhat darker look. Your preferences may differ.

I'm not much of a flash photographer, so I'm not sure how much the flash will help you here (how far away are you going to be from the subject?), but maybe you could bounce it off the ice floor?

Take as many shots as you can, use the rapid-fire mode. That's the point of digital, and to some extent, photography in general. Take as many shots as you can, and know that you'll have to throw most of them away--a lot of it is luck.

If it's important that you get good shots and you're not confident in your ability to do so, is it possible to visit the venue during a different event and practice then?

On preview: Good comments about using 1600 and doing noise reduction later.
posted by trevyn at 11:35 AM on October 13, 2005

Hey guys, thanks!

I had a 50mm 1.4 but I sold it to buy the 2.6 with macro (since I barely shoot sports shots, but I do like this one event).

I may have made a mistake, not tungsten but the halogen crappy bright lights they use in rinks. It'll be lit enough, just not great.

Someone said something about shooting in Shutter Priority and shooting at like 400iso with flash. They said that would keep the ambient light and crisp shots. I have my doubts.

I can get an 70-300mm L Lens (2.8) from a friend if I want, but I hate borrowing, ever.
posted by Hands of Manos at 11:43 AM on October 13, 2005

If you do use a flash in lowlight situations, I've learned with the Rebel XT it's better to go to shutter priority and do a slow shutter (maybe around 60) - if you set it to Av and do a larger aperture, it will slow down the shutter to the point of blurry pictures because it just considers the flash a fill and doesn't meter for it (same thing with shutter priority, but at least the exposures won't be blurry if you can hold steady).
posted by starman at 11:49 AM on October 13, 2005

I can get an 70-300mm L Lens (2.8) from a friend if I want, but I hate borrowing, ever.

Do you mean the 70-200mm L? That's a gorgeous lens, and I think you owe it to yourself to try it out, at least if you can make use of the zoom. As long as you don't schmuck it up, I think the borrowee will feel rewarded by lending it to you, assuming he/she offered it. People like to see their nice stuff put to good use, even if it isn't by them personally.
posted by trevyn at 11:54 AM on October 13, 2005

Also, I have a feeling this might not turn out to be as low-light as you think it is.
posted by trevyn at 11:56 AM on October 13, 2005

The one thing to keep in mind with the flash is that you will get better results toward the 85mm end of the range, in general, because the flash head can focus the light into a much narrower angle, and thus illuminate things farther away (assuming your camera and flash talk, and that your flash has a setting for the focal length. Mine does).

But the flash is still probably not powerful enough.

You can rent lenses, I hear. That might be worth it if this is a one-time thing and you really want the shot. Go rent a 300 f/2.8. One of those white monsters you see at pro sporting events.
posted by teece at 12:00 PM on October 13, 2005

kindall, is the 3200 ISO hack available for the Digital Rebel XT, or just the Rebel? Could you provide some more information?
posted by odinsdream at 1:30 PM on October 13, 2005

As far as white balance is concerned, I would either shoot RAW (you can set white balance in 10 degree increments in RAW garunteeing perfect white balance) or shoot several test shots when you get there and set the white balance using the Kelvin degrees. Halogen lights are somewhere around 4000 degrees.

I don't shoot in skateing rings. I do a lot of wedding photography though. I would use the flash. If nothing else it will help soften shadows. I'm not familiar with the Rebel, I use the 10D. I would shoot Shutter Priority, select the shutter speed necessary to freeze the motion you're dealing with, and allow the flash to expend as much energy as necessary to compensate. If your flash is moderately powerful, you should be able to brighten an object 40 feet away (or farther) without problems. The only concern I have is that if you have to shoot several shots in a row, you flash may not have time to compensate.

At ISO400, Canon sensors record very little noise. ISO800 is workable, but unless you want very noisy photos don't use ISO1600, as it is very hard to work with post. If you do shoot ISO1600, I would definitely shoot RAW. Personally, I would shoot RAW in any event, unless you're hurting for storage space.
posted by walljm at 1:46 PM on October 13, 2005

300D firmware hack (warning: lots of Dutch).

It doesn't say whether it applies to the 350D, though.
posted by nev at 2:08 PM on October 13, 2005

No, the Rebel XT hasn't been hacked yet... the hacked firmware works only with the original Digital Rebel. Apparently the DR firmware was just the 10D firmware with some of the features turned off, or something similar. Not sure that is the case with the XT.

(Canon's cameras run a version of DOS, just by the way.)
posted by kindall at 2:30 PM on October 13, 2005

I hacked my canon tonight and was able to go to 3200...now the question is "do I want to do that" it feels as if that's going to be pretty noisy!
posted by Hands of Manos at 10:11 PM on October 13, 2005

For moderate action you probably can get away with a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second but for most sports I stay at 1/500th of a second. For any action don't go with a shutter speed slower than 1/250th. Shoot at wide open aperture and you will be good, so it is a matter of picking an ISO that matches that combination for your particular lighting situation. Try not to use an autoflash setting if you can help it. Set it on manual and experiment for the best results. One thing you should realize is that unless you put a yellow filter on the flash, then you will be mixing 2 different color light sources. Which means that your white balance will never be perfect.
posted by JJ86 at 1:19 AM on October 14, 2005