Making your basketball action photos shine using Lightroom

On Monday I wrote about how to take great basketball action photos in gyms where you are cursed with low light, fast moving subjects, and where flash is sometimes not allowed (I never use flash when shooting basketball).  Here are the main things to remember when shooting basktball indoors:

1. Set your ISO as high as you can and still get a clean picture.  I set my 1D Mark III to 1600 or 3200.  Remember that you can always clean up some noise using Noise Ninja, or whatever program you prefer.
2. Set your auto focus to AI Servo
3. Set your mode to shutter priority (tv) and select as fast a shutter speed as you can while maintaining proper exposure (1/250 sec is my norm.)
4. Position yourself as close as you can behind the basket on the offense side of the floor (depending on which team you are focusing your shots on).
5. Ideally you need a fast f/2.8 lens.
6. Basketball action shots are best when you can see the players face or number, the basketball and/or the basket, and fans in the background.

After you have done all that you should get some pretty good shots.  In fact, you may think they're great shots, but bringing them into Lightroom is where you can really make them shine.  Here is one of my favorite Lightroom workflows for basketball:

Step One

Follow the (6) tips outlined above and you should get some pretty decent shots straight out of the camera... like this one.  But like I said... you'll want to take it into Lightroom to make it really shine.  If you're like me a lot of shots won't turn out this good even if you follow the steps outlined above.

Step Two

In Lightroom go to Basic in the Develop module and adjust the exposure as needed.  If you calibrate your monitor you should be able to trust your monitor.  If not, keep a close eye on the histogram, making sure you don't start to blow highlights or lose detail in the shadows.  Typically I would crop and straighten a photo as needed.  This layup shot is fine right out of the camera with no cropping as far as I'm concerned.

Step Three

I like to adjust the Tone Curve (usually changing the Point Curve to Medium Contrast.  Another option is to select the General Punch Lightroom Preset.  This step will remove the fuzziness that is inherent with digital photos no matter how good a photo you take.

Step Four

Most of the time I like to add a quick, subtle vignette to my photos using Post-Crop... or another option I like is to paint around my subject using the Adjustment Brush (K) and then lower the exposure a little.  This can really pop a subject off the page.  You can move the slider to increase or decrease the exposure to your own liking.  Very Cool!

That brings this week to a close.  I'm catching a plane to Nashville tomorrow to attend the ImagingUSA photography conference.  This will be my first time to attend.  It will be interesting to see how it compares to the NAPP Photoshop World Conference which I have attended in Vegas a couple of times (and plan to attend every year... it's that good!).  I'll let you know how things go.  I am there until next Wednesday so hopefully I can get in a blog or two while I'm there.

Keep shooting!

Ryan

Calibrating your monitor with the Spyder 3 Elite... Can you say E.A.S.Y.

Before I get going on today's post I want to show you this picture I took Tuesday morning.  This is the view I saw when I glanced out my window.  It was pretty awesome so I grabbed my camera, dropped it on my tripod, and got off a shot.  I did very little in Lightroom except increase the contrast to eliminate the fuzziness that is inherent in digital photos.  I was amazed at how quickly the light changed.  A couple of minutes after I took this shot, literally, the sun had risen and the sky had lost it's color.  For a brief moment, however, the suns reflection off the clouds and the atmosphere was  spectacular.

On monday I wrote about how to take great basketball photos, and I said that on Wednesday I would talk about how you can make your sport photo really "shine" through post-processing in Lightroom.  Now it's Wednesday... and I really want to talk about the Spyder 3 Elite calibrator because I calibrated my monitors for the first time yesterday and was really impressed with the result.  So I have decided to bump the post-processing blog to Friday. 

Calibrating your monitor with the Spyder 3 Elite

I use two side by side computer monitors at the office and they have never matched colorwise.  I have tried manually adjusting the monitors to get them to match and have had no luck.  I finally bit the bullet and decided to purchase a display calibrator.  After doing some research I decided to buy the Spyder 3 Elite from B&H Photo.  Let me tell you... there are a lot of options out there. 

I joined the PPA and NAPP groups through my LinkedIn account and posted a question about whether or not it is important to calibrate your monitor, and if so... what calibrator would they recommend?  I recieved 24 comments from NAPP members and 5 comments from PPA members.  LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals and I recommend checking it out if you haven't already.  I find it very helpful in that I can pose questions to other professionals and gain great information... for free!  Spyder was one of the recommended calibrators and, based on price point and those recommendations, I decided to give it a try.

To set up and run the calibration was amazingly simple and quick.  It only took me a few minutes to start calibrating the monitors.  After loading the program, you simply hang the calibrator over your screen and you are walked step by step through the process.

Before Calibration

After Calibration

I know this is not the best picture... but trust me the monitors are very closely matched now.  That's it for today.  I will provide more of a review as I use the Spyder 3 on some of my other monitors including my laptop.

Keep shooting!

Ryan

How to take great basketball shots

Have you ever taken pictures at a basketball game only to have them turn out blurry or dark?  Basketball is probably one of the harder sports to photograph because you are usually in a gym with lousy lighting.  I don't use flash (for sports photography) and at some basketball games it is not even allowed if you wanted to.  My brother is a high school coach in Washington state and here are a few pictures I took last week when I attended a couple of his games.

So what is the trick to getting great basketball photos?  It's pretty simple really, it's all in the equipment.  To take good photos of fast moving subjects in a poorly lit gym you need to use a high shutter speed of about 1/250 sec.  To achieve a fast shutter speed I usually have to set my ISO at 3200.  The problem with cheaper cameras is they tend to have a lot of noise (graininess) when you use a high ISO setting. 

I shoot in shutter priority (tv) which automatically adusts my apurture, usually to about f/2.8  You need a fast f/2.8 lens if you hope to achieve consistently good results.  I use a Canon 1D Mark III to shoot sports because it shoots 10 frames per second.  This is important if you hope to catch the action at it's peak.  Set your auto focus to AI Servo and your good to go.  This will adjust your focus as your subject moves.

Another trick to great basketball shots is to shoot from along the base line where you can get a clear shot of the action underneath the basket.  If you can get a shot of the packed stands with fans cheering in the background... all the better.

Does this mean you need an expensive camera to shoot sports?  I would say that you definately need a good DSLR.  The point-and-shoot cameras do not work at all for this type of photography.  They just can't shoot fast enough and the lag in shutter response results in missed action.

After the shot there is some post-processing work that needs to be done if you really want your photos to shine.  I will discuss that on Wednesday.

That's it for today.  I'm off to watch the Boise State Bronco's take on TCU in the Fiesta Bowl.  Both teams are undefeated.  Should be a great game!

Keep shooting!

Ryan