City Basketball Championships

Hey everybody, I'd really like some critiques for these. It was really difficult lighting conditions and I had to do a lot more post-processing than I usually do.

I'm posting the page they are on because I can't seem to embed the slideshow on this board.

C&C not just welcome, but encouraged

http://www.soonews.ca/viewarticle.php?id=16490

Thanks

Considering the conditions, you did an awesome job. I'm sure you know everything i'm going to say before I say it.
The image is perfectly white balanced, but I do wonder what the original color temp of the gym was. Usually in situations where the room is really orange or yellow. I correct most, but leave some of the original color so the images look the way viewers would have seen it. Although I am having trouble remembering if Bawating uses those horrible greenish/orangish lights. If so.... ignore the above, there's no saving those lights.
There is a good bit of noise for the viewing size, especially with the tighter shots. Unavoidable, I'm sure. What did you have to work with? 1/60 @f1.8 iso 640? or somewhere in that ballpark?
Maybe add some more "portrait framed" wide and stagnant shots.(more light, slower shutter) and do the tighter shots framed as landscape. That way they're shown smaller and with less grain evident.

Basically I'm just throwing ideas out there. The compositions are GREAT and without you buying the school a whole new set of lights, no one was going to do any better. Not without flash... a bit of a no no i'm sure.

Great job Buddy, don't be so hard on yourself. Celebration, not critique.

I have the same problem as always with portrait vs landscape. A few of these were good landscapes that I cropped.

The lights were terrible, they were like spotlights. Dark in one spot, kid takes two steps and he's overexposed. I finally decided to expose for the bright spots and try to save the images in shadow. Worked out on all but a few. Near the end of the game I switched my strategy and exposed for the shadows under the basket, which payed off as well.

I have sequence shots where the white wall goes from green to orange, along with everything else so yah... it was THOSE lights. I set my white balance manually (almost always do) but that didn't help because the lights cycle through the different colour temperatures.

I think I lost a little contrast in post, I whould try and put it back but that really shows the noise and I was under a deadline. If I was selling these to the parents or whatever I would re-visit these.

I'm curious too on what lens you were using for it and what you had your ISO at.

My instincts here are fastest lens possible (I prob would have tried my 85 1. and my ISO I would have played with and chimped with at the shoot but guessing 800 may have been the sweater spot.

They're good for the action and you've captured it great but like you said the darkness just muddles them up... blech. Why can't every where just be a giant softbox?

(also way off topic but how'd your shoot at Foggy's go?)

I actually found the kids were moving fast enough that I needed shutter speeds at about 1/200th to avoid any motion blur. Because of that most of these were shot at about f/2 ISO 1000 with my Canon 50mm f/1.4 (which I just got back from repair).

Some were shot with either my 24-70mm f/2.8 or 70-200mm f/2.8 wide open at ISO 1250-ish.

Maybe next time I can convince them to let me strobe the arena

I didn't go to Foggy's, I got lazy. I know there was a show last night and again I stayed home. I'm getting too old for this s**t.

Like I said, I think I could save some of the contrast but I am one of those people who tries to learn and move on to the next thing. I am not that focused which is why I could probably never do shows like Colin does.

Thanks for the feedback, feel free to add anything else.

If you guys didn't see it I added the other game from that day as another story. This was earlier and I got a lot less keepers because I was experimenting for the A game. I do like photo 6 though of the kid running into the pick.

The white balance was a nightmare in this series, so don't hold that against me


B Game Link

I think that you did a good job. I'm not sure how to go about evaluating sports photography very well. I think that you positioned yourself very well. Like others have said, I wouldn't mind seeing more landscape shots and wide-angle shots however, I do realize that you are dealing with space restrictions due to the advertising.