One Game at a Time

This evening I was assigned to photograph some Maryland football recruits practicing for the upcoming Crab Bowl on Saturday at Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson MD. I photographed the squad on Tuesday evening during a dinner and in the process got to know several of them. After chasing them down several times I got to learn some of their names, numbers, and what they actually looked like. That helped a lot tonight.

I also took some time today and typed up a list of the players I was interested in hitting this evening at practice. The official Crab Bowl roster contains probably 60 players and I'm interested in approximately 10 of them. Narrowing that list down to something that is the size of an index card is tremendously valuable while you're racing around the sideline and on the field looking for your subjects.

I shot with both bodies tonight because I wanted to use a combination of glass. I wanted the 300mm lens so that I could capture 2 items of interest: close-ups between plays and in the huddle, and receptions down the field. A 300mm gives great reach for both situations. I also wanted the versatile 70-200mm workhorse lens that I seemingly always use. It's a perfect focal range for getting pretty close-in on your subjects but it can also go out wide enough to capture full-body shots from a pretty close distance.

Once again I was back up in the high ranges of ISOs: 3200 and above. The lights on the practice field are obviously considerably darker than the lights in Byrd Stadium or in Comcast, so I had to resort to high ISOs and slow shutter speeds for proper exposure. No flirting around with f/3.5 or f/4 tonight - I was wide open at f/2.8 and I slowed down to a dangerous 1/125th from time to time to properly expose at ISO 3200. I realize I could've got up considerably higher in the ISOs (I've sold photos shot at night at 6400) but I like to keep the ISO as low as I can for the shot I want.

I considered activating VR on both the lenses but opted against it in the end. I'm not sure how much VR helps once you work above 1/125th a second shutter. My hand was steady enough on most of my 1/250th shots but there was some jitter on some of my 1/125th shots.

Post-processing went pretty quickly and I was able to push up the photos to the site. So far we've heard very good things about our coverage of the Crab Bowl - both parents and coaches are keeping an eye out for us and asking us about buying photos.

I was assigned to photograph the media day event for the Maryland Crab Bowl this evening at the Gossett Team House at the University of Maryland. While walking down from Lot 1 to Gossett Team House my attention turned towards dinner and I wondered what kind of food would be served. In my past experiences at Gossett they've had the milk machine running and actively churning out 800 calorie glasses of thick chocolate milk at a cool 50 degrees. Since I didn't have much to eat today I was looking forward to a thick cold glass of chocolate milk!

The media day was the standard affair where several reporters make the rounds and interview players. A few photographers and videographers were present but nobody was using flash. That surprised me because the lighting was awful and many of the players had very dark complexions. I used my 24-70mm lens with an SB-800 flash and the built-in diffuser. I set my ISO to 400, WB to flash, aperture to f/5.6, and shutter to 1/250th. I decided to use TTL with a +0.7 compensation so that I could overexpose many of the players. When your subjects start off dark it helps to slightly overexpose because it is often easy to increase the strength of the black colors in post-processing.

Seth provided me with a list of 10 or so recruits that have made verbal commitments to Maryland. I traversed the room carefully avoiding the generous servings of lasagna the players had removed from the buffet table and introduced myself to several of the players. They photographed quite well. I was half expecting them to want to strike a cheesy pose or do something foolish but they actually posed quite well. All of the shots came out without smiles and they looked like football players should look - all business.

While taking a few shots inside the cafeteria I decided to take one of the more energetic recruits out to the hall so I could photograph him next to some trophys. I kept the aperture at f/5.6 because I wanted to be able to capture some of the trophys in the background while still being sharp on my player. I had a bit of a problem with bounced light off the trophy case but I was able to work around it by rotating the flash head away from the glass.

I was really pleased with how the shots came out in the hall. I'd like to get a Terrapin or two out there this Fall.

Afterwards Seth and I hung out and waited for the players to meet with their coaches and go over their respective playbooks for defense and offense. Once they concluded I rounded up the roughly 10 commits and gathered them around a large Terps sign so I could grab a picture of them looking like future Terrapins. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hold onto a couple of the players because they had to leave and head back up to Baltimore. But I got most of them.

For the group photo I went with my 14-24mm lens backed all the way out to 14mm. Those players were HUGE and I needed to be really wide to get them all in the frame. There was no possible way that I could've gotten all of them in that narrow hallway with a DX sensor and a 24-70mm. I barely got them with a 14mm on a full-frame, and on a DX a 24mm would effectively turn into a 36mm. I would have to be roughly twice as far away if I wanted to take a similar shot. And I would've lost a lot of detail in their faces too.

I've enjoyed shooting more flash photography. It's a fun spice to use to add some variety to your photos. And it's definitely enjoyable shooting below ISO 2000!

After a week off I got back behind the glass this evening to photograph the Terps in their matchup against their eastern neighbors, Delaware State. I arrived 15 minutes early for the event so that I would have enough time to prepare and get my laptop opened up and all my camera equipment assembled.

I bumped into Kirk Queen out on the floor along with Jackie Borowski. After some chit-chatting I bailed on the baseline and went up into the student section to get some heads-up shots of the Terps driving to the net.

When you're on the baseline you're at about knee-level with the players. Given that they're going up against a hoop that's roughly 8 feet up it can be tough to get player faces, and that's what a lot of people want to see. You can get some great down-the-court shots of the players breaking up court or playing defense, but in-so-far as dunks, layups, and dribble penetration you're often capturing a lot of necks and chins when you shoot from the baseline. The only exception to this is if you shoot early when the player goes up for the shot. Unfortunately, without the hoop in the frame it leaves context out of the shot and leaves it wanting more.

If you go up a little higher you can catch a good amount of the players faces as they drive towards the basket. You have to be careful though about where you go and how high up you position yourself. If you opt to go really high you have to go more towards the sideline so that the backboard doesn't block your shot. If you go sideline then the only shots you get are the baseline drives and those are few and far in between (most of the time the players drive up the middle).

Alternatively, you can stay directly behind the basket but then you aren't looking at the players straight on as they head to the hoop. It all goes back to something I discussed a few posts ago - think about where the players will be on the court, what hand they'll use when they shoot, and where you can be to best capture the shot. If players shoot with their right hand then you want to be on their left so that their shooting arm doesn't block their face.

I was happy with the shots I got from up in the students section this evening. I wouldn't want to camp out there for the whole game but having a few of the frames gives the gallery some spice.

I went back to flourescent white-balance this evening because I lost my WB presets Sunday evening when I attempted to adjust them at the Verizon Center for the BB&T classic. Flourescent worked pretty well but I'm making a mental note to bring my gray card to the next event in the Comcast Center. That's where I shoot most of my events so that's where I'm going to need to set my pre-set.

As usual I shot ISO 2500 with 1/500th shutter and f/3.5. The f/3.5 aperture is just narrow enough where I get some decent sharpness on my exposures and 2500 doesn't kick in a lot of noise. I can also do a lot of lightening in post-processing in Lightroom. I'm a lot happier with f/3.5 than I was with f/2.8.

This has made me rethink a lot of stuff about "fast glass".

A year ago the upper-bound on usable ISO for Nikon gear was 1600. Even then you had to lighten and blacken your photos in post-processing. But the D3 changed all that. I can effectively shoot ISO 6400 and it looks better than 1600 a year ago. When I shot 1600 I had not choice but to shoot f/2.8 and all my exposures were soft.

These days I regularly shoot above 1600 and I drop the aperture down to f/3.5. Sometimes I even go down to f/4. The results are noticeably crisper due to the reduced aperture.

"Slower" glass (f/4 or narrower) is significantly cheaper than "fast" glass (f/2.8 or wider). It is also a lot lighter than fast glass because there is less material used in constructing the optics. If all I shot was men's basketball at the Comcast Center and I was comfortable with ISO 3200 noise I could shoot with f/4 glass for a lot less money than f/2.8 and my shots would come out great! If that's the limit of what you use the lens for then you have to ask yourself: does it make sense to pay a lot more for glass you aren't going to use? If you don't plan to shoot between f/2.8 and f/4 due to the softness then why pay a premium for a f/2.8 lens?

The answer is obvious: versatility. Photographers don't typically just shoot in the same place day in and day out. Sports photographers sometimes do because they shoot in the same venues. But they almost always work on side-projects where the lighting is different. Then again, how often does a sports photographer need to pull out a 400mm f/2.8 lens in a wedding or a corporate board room?

Given my experience in technology I predict 2 trends over the next decade: there will be huge advancements in low-noise high-sensitivity CCDs, and arenas/gyms will become brighter as the cost of lighting continues to drop.

Given all that it doesn't seem too unreasonable to me to look ahead and see more sports photographers shooting with f/4 glass. I predict that this will happen inside arenas but will eventually spread to outdoor fields as the bulbs in the existing lights are replaced.

Accordingly, I'd say that if you are a sports photographer on a budget you should consider f/4 glass as an alternative to f/2.8 glass that is typically used in the field today. If you instead invest in a D700 you'll be able to shoot at ISO6400 and that will make up for the reduced amount of light a f/4 lens will capture. You'll also take sharper images than others shooting at f/2.8.

The only caution I'd add is: avoid variable aperture glass!

With variable aperture glass the maximum aperture varies as your zoom changes. In a f/4 - f/5.6 70-200mm lens the maximum aperture at 70mm is f/4 but the maximum aperture at 200mm is f/5.6. In many situations your shutter speed drives your exposure: in sports you want 1/500th to stop motion, in a bar on rear-curtain-sync you want 1/10th so you can blur the background. Many times you adjust your aperture so that your exposure is proper given your shutter. In sports you may say "ok, at 1/500th I need f/4 to properly expose". Alternatively, in the night-life rear-curtain-sync world you might need f/11 or f/13 to properly expose at 1/10th.

It's not trivial to find that proper exposure level. In sports you often stay in the same place and the light remains constant but in bars or other environments you can contend with shifting light sources and varying distances to your subject. You want to be able to say "f/11 at 1/10th second" is your exposure regardless of whether your zoom is 24mm or 50mm or 70mm. If the aperture changes as your zoom changes you can't do that.

Accordingly, while I say that slower glass may become more prominent I still believe that fixed-aperture glass will remain prominent for professional photographers. Dealing with variable-aperture glass introduces an unnecessary variable into a process that is difficult to begin with.

After a late night out on Saturday shooting One Louder perform up at Sonoma's Bar and Grille I headed down to the Verizon Center in Washington DC to shoot the Terps face the GWU Colonials in the 14th Annual BB&T Classic.

Last season I didn't cover any Wizards or Mystics games so it's been awhile since I've been to the Verizon Center. In fact, it's been so long that I believe the last time I was there the facility was called the "MCI Center". Coming up the escalator I was very impressed by the recent improvements to the surrounding neighborhood. When Julie and I attended Caps games several years ago the neighborhoods were undergoing a revitalization and there was a lot of construction. Nowadays with all the construction finished the area around the Verizon Center is really quite nice.

I made my way to the media entrance and found my way down to the media room without any problems. The media room had a lot of equipment in it but I staked out a little corner and unpacked my gear. At times like these I'm happy that I have a Think Tank with a lockable strap and zipper. After taking out my gear I locked up my bag and secured it to the table.

Heading out to the floor I was amazed by the quality of the scoreboard in Verizon Center. It was spectacular! I ended up watching the trailing end of the Virginia Tech and Navy game on the scoreboard because it looked so great!

Once Virginia Tech and Navy vacated the floor I kept my eyes peeled for what side the Terps would take as their home bench. I wanted to shoot on that side so that I was close to Gary Williams and I'd get the Terps shooting towards me in the second half rather than the first. After settling in I tried to adjust my white balance but had little success without a neutral gray card. I tried to set the white balance off the back of my white press credential but failed - the colors came out green and disgusting. I ended up going down to auto white-balance in the first half and it didn't work well at all. The colors were inconsistently off and I was not at all impressed.

At half-time I changed my white balance to flourescent so that the results would at least be consistent. By going with a fixed white balance I can then at least copy and paste the white balance adjustment in Lightroom afterwards. When the camera auto-calculates the white balance it means that I need to adjust the white balance for each individual photo I publish. It's a lot easier to just make sure that every photo is off by the same amount and then apply the same correction in post processing.

Overall the lighting in Verizon is very good and I was able to shoot around ISO 2000 at f/3.5. I've been keeping my aperture tighter than f/2.8 lately so that I can increase my sharpness. With the good high-ISO performance of the D3 I can flirt with f/4 sometimes if I kick the ISO up to 3500 or 4000 in some cases.

Please go over and read the article and view the photos on Maryland's win over GWU at the BB&T Classic over on the DC Sports Box.

The lesson for today is: Don't Trust Google Maps on the iPhone.

Let me say that again: Don't Trust Google Maps on the iPhone.

I split early from the men's soccer game so that I could come home, offload, swap lenses, pick up Julie, and head down to the Show Place Arena at the Maryland Equestrian Center in Upper Marlboro MD for Maryland Competitive Cheer's performance at JamFest. The arena has an address of 14900 Pennsylvania Avenue Upper Marlboro MD. Well, where Google points you sure isn't the Show Place Arena.

On the iPhone it's even worse - Google Maps places you INSIDE the Beltway!

Julie and I got all double-crossed up going back and forth on Route 4 trying to figure out where the Show Place Arena is located and ended up arriving late. With Maryland set to perform at 3:55 and our arrival time being no earlier than 4:10 I planned on just trying to get some shots of the cheerleaders after the event. Fortunately for me the performances were running about 30 minutes late and my arrival was about 5 minutes ahead of when the Terps headed out to perform.

I made my way around the floor and located a couple of the coaches of the competitive cheer team. I told them who I was with and arranged for a group photo after the routine. The coaches were excited to have someone photographing the routine of their team - I don't think they get very much photographic exposure.

During the routine I ripped through as many photos as possible on both bodies. When one body slowed down for the cache to be synced out to the compact flash I'd pick up the second body and start ripping frames. I haven't ever shot cheerleaders before so I didn't know what I was doing. As a result I figured I'd take the buck-shot approach and get as many photos as possible!

Afterwards I headed backstage and attached my SB-800 to one of my bodies. I have 3 SB-800s but I only brought 1 to the event today (I didn't want to have to carry the second or third around with me). I took some test shots over near the water jugs and settled in on ISO 800, 1/160th second exposure, and f/6.3 aperture. I wanted the aperture to be pretty high because I knew that the girls would have to be in 2 or 3 rows in order to all fit in the frame. I also wanted them all to be tack sharp and I knew that I needed something above f/5.6.

It was really easy to get the girls lined up for the group shot. They all just piled in and actually lined up quite perfectly from a balance standpoint. I took 2 shots on the 24-70mm lens and then I got close up for a couple of 14mm shots. The cheerleaders out towards the edge of the frame are a bit distorted but the ones in the middle look really good. I made sure I got players only as well as players and coaches.

Finding a location for the shot was a bit difficult. The arena didn't have any good backdrops I could use so we just went into a tunnel and I took the photo there. With solid green walls on either side and with no light coming from the back of the tunnel it created a decent enough scene for the photo. Plus with the SB-800 set to +1.3 exposure compensation and my aperture at f/6.3 I was pretty safe in that very little light from the background came through into the photo.

Julie and I stuck around in the arena until the conclusion of the event and waited for the awards ceremony. It took about an hour before all was said and done and in the end it probably wasn't worth the wait. There wasn't a gold or silver trophy and the teams didn't line up afterwards for photos. They just accepted it and headed for the bus. I got a shot of a few girls with the trophy and maybe the magazine will use it.

Afterwards we headed home through the somewhat heavy snow, warmed up some leftover spaghetti, and settled down in the living room. I got through all of my soccer and cheer photos and even was able to get both blog posts up before heading out to the One Louder show in Columbia later on.

On Friday evening the weather forecasters in the DC area began to forecast the chance for some light snow on Saturday afternoon. I crossed my fingers hoping that I would be able to snap a few shots of the Maryland Men's Soccer team competing in snowshowers.

Unfortunately Mother Nature didn't cooperate.

None-the-less, the weather was a decent overcast and that made for a relatively painless exposure. When the light varies it can be difficult to properly adjust exposure. Additionally, changing your white balance can be a problem. You could rely on auto white-balance settings but those sometimes don't work too well.

This was my first soccer game in awhile where I've shot with 2 bodies and I didn't quite know what to expect. Last season I shot with 2 bodies but this year I've just used the D3 with the 400mm lens. At times I've felt too long and have wished I had a second body for shorter glass. Today there were a bunch of opportunities to get some shots on shorter glass and I took advantage of them whenever I could.

However, in post processing I found that I might've selected one of the shots rather than very many. I shot with both cameras set to f/4, ISO 1000 and around 1/1000th of a second shutter. f/4 at 70mm doesn't offer very good isolation against the background so I should've considered going closer to f/3.2 or even f/2.8 for the shorter glass so that I could improve the isolation of my subject.

I had a bit of an equipment blip today while working with the bodies. The power on one of the D3 was a bit flaky and would go out several times. I've seen this before on this body and I'm considering sending it in for service or repair. The battery is fully charged but all of the sudden power will go out on the body and the low-battery icon will blink. I turn off the camera and turn it back on and it works.

I swapped batteries and the problem persisted on the same body, which leads me to believe it's a problem in the contacts between the battery and the body. When I shoot landscape I didn't have a problem. But when I rotated the camera counter-clockwise and shot vertical I had a problem. Maybe I'll try rotating clockwise so the battery is on top and see how that goes...

Last night I reorganized some of the filesystems on my server at home. I have a 650GB RAID-1 mirror on my fileserver and I've used 65GB for pictures. Music, Movies, and TV Shows occupies another 160GB, and my active files chew up around 10GB. On top of that I have the OS and that occupies some amount of real estate. What it all boils down to is: I'm running low on internal storage.

I've used external storage as mirrors for a few years now and it has proven to be reliable. I disconnected my 3 external USB drives from being directly connected to my fileserver so that I could run them through a hub and connect even more external drives. I'm going to allocate more space on the RAID to my imagery and offload TV Shows, Movies, and Music onto an external drive which I'll mirror elsewhere. Lastly, I picked up a 1TB Western Digital USB hard drive for around $139 last night on NewEgg.

Keeping all my photos safe and sound is really important. Hopefully with the hub and the new external hard drive coming I'll free up some space for increasing my image library.

Dave Lovell wrote an article on Maryland's win over Creighton and posted it over on the DC Sports Box along with a photo gallery.

A few posts ago I talked about picking up a second body for basketball season. With a lot of support from Julie I moved forward and picked up a used D3 for a pretty penny. I've been really fortunate to have such an understanding wife that encourages my photographic interests. Without her support I wouldn't be where I am today and wouldn't be thinking about where I could be a year from now.

Shooting basketball with a second body is no new experience to me. Last winter I covered the Terps using a Nikon D2H and a D200. I was always torn about how to pair the bodies with the glass because the D2H offered a higher framerate but a lot worse high-ISO performance. Do you go short on the D200 with a 70-200mm lens and get 4fps under the basket for dunks or do you opt for the 9fps the D2H offers but get a lot of grain in your pictures? It was a tough decision.

Fortunately this year I have 2 of the same bodies (D3) and that removes that mental exercise from the table. I shot this evening's game using a 300mm and 70-200mm lens. I carried my 24-70mm lens out to the baseline but didn't attach it. There were some opportunities for some great wide-angle shots but overall the 70-200mm did the job well. It has great reach even on an FX sensor and can get me out to midcourt pretty well. I can also shoot the opposing sideline reasonably well. Lastly, the 70-200mm is great when there is full-court pressure and you want to be wide until the team crosses the timeline.

It didn't take long for me to warm up to the dual-camera shooting mode this evening. There's a lot of bulky equipment to balance and the straps make it difficult. I also use Aqua Tech eyepieces to prevent my forehead from being marred by the hot-shoe mount on the top of the camera. The Aqua Techs stick out from the camera body about 3/4 of an inch and are a great hook for catching straps. Ideally I'd work without straps because then I wouldn't risk any snags as I transition between bodies. But I need the straps for safely transporting the cameras back and forth.

I shot ISO 2500, 1/500th, and f/3.5 for the entire game on both cameras. Last game I shot f/4 and I wanted to see how sharp f/3.5 would look. At f/3.5 I let in a little more light but still had some reasonable sharpness. The bigger difference I noticed was the poor performance of the auto white-balance system. On my first body I manually set the white-balance using a neutral gray card. I didn't bring the gray card with me this evening so I set the second body to auto. The performance was garbage. The whites were way off and everything was a mess.

Fortunately I picked up on this pretty quickly and set a programmed white balance based on the M on the baseline. It's not as accurate as the neutral-gray card but it worked reasonably well.

I used continuous high speed shooting for the entire game but stayed on top of reviewing the photos during timeouts and breakpoints. I really feel good when I'm able to rip through almost all of my photos and delete the bad ones before I leave the court at the end of the game. I realize that I should probably spend more time socializing with the other photographers because that could lead to more work but at the same time I want to be able to get through my post-processing as quickly as possible and deleting the photos on camera is a huge timesaver.

At halftime I offloaded both cards onto the MBP and began the Lightroom import process. I made it back out to the court just in time for the beginning of the second half. This worked out well because after the game I was able to copy over both second-half cards to the hard drive before shuffling off to the Gary Williams press conference.

During the press-conference I got through my first round of picks and had my photos narrowed down to around 100 potentially publishable shots. After getting home I pieced through those and got it down to around 25 that I quickly captioned and published.

It's nice that things are moving along so quickly with my post processing and publishing. Last year when I had to write an article for most of the games it was a large time-suck to get through everything before heading to bed. Many times I went to bed well after my wife and I kept looking forward to the day where I can simply shoot, caption, publish, and head to bed. Happily that time has arrived. How long it will last remains to be seen but for now I'll enjoy it while it is here!

Please go and take a look at Andy Churchill's article on Maryland's win over Michigan on the DC Sports Box.