LET'S LIGHT SOME BASKETBALL!

Most people still swear by the ambient light style of shooting high school basketball. A few others have taken on the
direct strobe approach. Well, then there is that small minority of us who like to go the high tech route and use two remotes.
You will find that when you get everything dialed in just right, you will get superb results. I tend to move around quite a bit freelancing, so I have 
yet to figure out each gym. In the following diagram and photos, I will show you how I lit one gym in particular.

What you'll need is:
-- One camera with PC connection,
-- Two clamps with hot shoe mounts (I suggest the Bogen Super Clamps),
-- Two strobes, also with PC connections,
-- One radio slave transmitter (Pocket Wizards are great),
-- Two radio slave receivers,
-- Three PC to miniphone cable's (if using Pocket Wizards).

Minus the camera, you're looking at a base price of about $1,000, depending on what type of strobes you choose, and if you get jackrabbit packs.

The "O"s are where you should try to set the mounts.

The "X" is where you should aim the strobes.

The lines are about the coverage area
of the strobes at 85mm.

 

 

 

 

1: Mount the clamps somewhere near where the "O"s are (If you can get them higher, that would be great).

2: Mount the strobe and radio slave on the clamp.

3: Aim the strobe around where the "X" is.

4: If you are using SB-26's, set the power setting to 1/4th in the manual setting and zoom it to 85mm.

5: What I'll do now is generally start at 1/250th at f/4 or 5.6. Take a light meter reading and make my adjustments from there.

6: Also, start with 800 speed film and see if you can get away without pushing.

 
 

At 1/4 power, the strobes will recycle pretty darn quickly. After a few rolls though, you might start to get a little bit of a recycle lag.

At the start of the game, you can use the motor drive with no problems up to four shots.

Pros and cons of this system:

 --The good thing is that your colors will really pop out compared to ambient light.

--It's also less distracting than using one flash on camera like a lot of people do.

--Using two radio slaves is also better because if you use an optical slave, you run the risk of someone (a fan) blocking
the first flash, and not triggering the second. Sometimes one might not fire, so having two is a sort of backup.

--The bad thing is when you are shooting inside an all metal gym, sometimes you can collect radio interference from
police portable radios, and they will fire the flash like a strobe light. Not good when you are trying to conserve batteries.

--Also you will sometimes find pockets of "dead air," as I call it. It's where your channel just won't work. Change channels and you should be rockin.'


Questions (and I'm sure there will be a few)?

E me