 Tammy L. Odell |
How to take night time photos of baseball? Can anyone give advice on taking night time photos of a baseball field without using flash?? I will need to take photos of the lights and the kids playing on the field. I figured using flash would not help since the photos will be a wide angle view, and the subject will be far away. The lights from the field should be very bright. I wondered if using 800 speed film would be to grainy if they were to be enlarged? I need all the advice I can get, the event is tomorrow, and this is a paid job for a lighting company. Thanks in advance!! Tammy Odell
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Steven Chaitoff |
800 will be grainy, but with no flash that is what you will have to do. 800 Speeds have come a long way with minimizing grain.
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Tammy L. Odell |
Thanks Steven!! What if used 400 speed and used a tripod??Do you think I could use flash and still have them look good??
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Steven Chaitoff |
Tammy, I tripod is always helpful to stabilize the camera, but in your case it is not camera shake that is the issue: Baseball has a lot of high speed action. The ball itself, of course, is really moving, but even the players are running, jumping and I would consider that pretty fast action. So, with that in mind, I would stay with a higher speed -- I like Fuji Superia, Velvia...The main obstacle is having a fast enough shutter to keep things sharp & a tripod won't really help with that, but if you have one, by all means bring it. What will help is fast film & fast lenses. If you're looking for really large blowups, then you have a dillema. You'll simply have to sacrifice the grain in the prints. I mean, good, sharp pictures with grain are better than bad, dark pictures with no grain. It sounds like you have a flash but are hesitant to use it. I would definitely use it, because then none of this will be an issue. It needs to be powerful though.
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
sounds like you're confusing shooting the game with shooting the field.
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Tammy L. Odell |
Thanks for your input Steven and Gregory. My main objective is to get shots of the whole field, not really the game itself. The shots will mainly be wide angle, no closeups of the ball or players. Since it is for a lighting company, they mainly just want photos of the field and lights with kids in the background, ect. So my question is still the same, will my flash (sigma 500 super) help light the whole field or should I try using a tripod and no flash and hope the field lights will be sufficent??
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Steven Chaitoff |
Sorry, I didn't read into your question that much. OK...so you have a lot more latitude here. You can use 400 speed, certainly a tripod & I'd use a flash as well as long as everything is in the distance like a landscape (I mean no foreground vs. background) I looked up the Sigma 500, it's got a pretty large guide number so I think it would be beneficial. You just don't want foreground elements very bright and an underexposed background.
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
forget the flash. your main concern is a vantage point and use a tripod because you can go deeper into slower shutter speeds because you're not needing anything from the game to stand out. you could get in a one second exposure in the time the pictcher is looking for the signal from the catcher. any blur from a player moving is negligable from a wide view making the image so small. you need to find out what they are expecting of how much of the lighting structure they want to be visible.
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Steven Chaitoff |
Well we obviously have a difference in opinion here. I still stand under the idea that as long as anything is moving, you need a fast enough shutter to freeze it. 1 second? Kids don't stand still for 1 second, & you are bound the have blur & fringes around each player. Even if the field & lights are the subject, you still ought to have a pleasing, sharp picture. With that in mind, it's not really a matter of whether the flash will illuminate the field. It will. I would sync the flash as fast as you can to illuminate the field itself and then use a relatively slower shutter, maybe 1/30th to properly expose the sky and let the field lights burn. But obviously there are two ways to do things -- whatever floats your boat.
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Tammy L. Odell |
Thanks so much guys, you have givin me some good advice. I think I will try some of both, w/o flash and w/ flash. I will plan to take as many shots as possible!!Thanks again for your quick responses!!!
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