 Alicia L. Field |
What flash do I need? My husband bought me a Olympus Evolt E500 for Christmas, a definite upgrade from my Kodak. My son is very active in sports and most pictures I took with the Kodak were very dark and sometimes blurry. I am wondering for sports pictures what setting should I use? What flash would be good for nightime pictures from stadium to football field? What about wrestling pictures from only 10-20 feet in a semi dark gym? I am really new at this so any suggestions would be appreciated.
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Peter M. Wilcox |
You don't mention what lenses you recieved with the E500, I assume one or both of the kit lenses? The 14-45 and/or the 40-150? For shots 10 feet away, the internal flash will probably work fine, longer shots will need an external unit. There are two worth considering, the FL36 and FL50. The difference is power (and cost). With the 14-45 lens at 45mm and at the maximum aperture of F5.6, and ISO400, the FL50 is capable of lighting a shot up to 42 feet away. The FL36 will reach about 30 feet. With a faster lens, the 50mmF2 for example, the FL50 will reach out to about 150 feet and the FL36 100 feet. Night shooting in a football stadium is difficult. The light is low and you will want to use the custom white balance feature. Use as high an ISO value as you can tolerate (high values will increase noise, which can be reduced with post processing - more software). If you can justify the cost, one of the F2 lenses will give you better results. Unless you are within the range of the flash, you will be taking available light pictures. Nobody in the stands of a gym or stadium is within flash range of the field. Maybe the near sidelines, but how many pictures of the bench do you need? :)
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Alicia L. Field |
Thanks for the info. Yes, I received two lenses with the camera. The photos I took of my sons football games last season were so dark and most were not clear enough to save. I think my best bet would be to take a class and figure this camera out. When you start talking about ISO and aperture my head starts to throb! :-) Have no idea what you are talking about. My last camera was fully automatic so I never had to configure anything. Hopefully by next season I will be a semipro!
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Peter M. Wilcox |
They do offer some good courses online here, they do a pretty good job and there are several which will provide a good introduction. But in brief, there are three things which control exposure: ISO, which refers to the sensitivity of the sensor or film. On the E500 you have the choice of 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600 (the last two available only if you select the "boost ISO" option, they are more noisy). ISO200 needs half the light to make a good exposure that ISO100 requires, ISO1600 needs 1/16 the light. The next variable is shutter speed, which ranges from 10 or 30 seconds down to 1/4000 of a second. 1/250 of a seconds admits half the light that 1/125 of a second does. When hand holding a camera, the rule of thumb is use a shutter speed equal to 1 over the 35mm equivalent focal length. Which for the E500 means that at 45mm, you should have a speed of at least 1/90 second. The final variable is aperture, there is a diaphram inside the lens which opens and closes, the aperture is identified by F-stop. A change of 1.4x in aperture is equal to a change of 2x light. Small aperture numbers admit more light. For a given scene, with a constant amount of light, if you change one of these three variable, one or both of the other two must be adjusted to compensate and give a proper exposure. As a starting point for a night game, I would set the ISO to 1600 (it will be noisy, but you can get better exposure), use the 40-150mm lens at 40mm which will give you a max aperture of F3.5, and set the camera in Program mode, which will allow it to pick the shutter speed and lens aperture. Your results won't be great, but they will be much better than a point & shoot camera can do. Use a monopod as well to stabilize the camera (tripod works better, but too bulky in a stadium). The wonderful thing about digital, is you can just pick a setting, take the shot, instantly see how it did, make adjustments, and try again.
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Peter K. Burian |
Alicia: Some good advice so far. Yes, the more powerful flash unit, and ISO 800 should work in the gym. But in the stadium, no flash unit will provide effective "reach" unless you are a pro, working at the sidelines. Regards, Peter Burian, Instructor
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Alicia L. Field |
I am ordering an FL36 flash for my camera. Can I use it in auto setting or do I need to customize everything?
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Peter K. Burian |
Alicia: Yes, it can be fully automatic. Set the camera for P mode and the flash for automatic TTL. Peter
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Alicia L. Field |
What does TTL mean? Where is that setting?
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Peter K. Burian |
Alicia: It means through the lens metering. I have not used the FL36 for some time so cannot recall how to set every function. When you get it, check the owner's manual. The factory set default mode is usually the fully automatic TTL. Peter
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Alicia L. Field |
thanks for the info. guess I better take a few classes. love the camera but it is so much different than the point and click! Alicia
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