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Olympics Diving Amerture Photgrapher - advice needed

K

kickingk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 22, 2007
20
0
Hi all, Going to the olympics tomorow and watching the Diving, I think I am 9 rows from the front, I have a Nikon d5100 and have the following lens, 18-200mm and 35mm.

I gather it would be best to take the 18-200 lens, to try and get the perfect picture, what would be the ideal settings, I normally try and shoot in Manual still learning ie

Aperture, Shutter and ISO?

I think the light should be OK Before the event starts I can take some pictures to check the exposure.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

THanks
 
Total camera length in Olympic venues is limited to 30 cm, so make sure your equipment is smaller than that length - otherwise you could have serous problems getting through security.

Arrive early, take test photos.
 
I saw somewhere that the lighting in there isn't that great. Pros with great lenses are having to push their ISO to 3200+ just to get fast enough. As btbrossard said, get there early and test, see how far you can push your ISO without too much noise. Good luck and have fun!
 
I don't think you will be able to shoot with those lenses. The 18-200 has a varied, slow aperture. You'd have to push the ISO to 3200 or 6400 to get a high enough shutter speed for a good sports shot.
The 35mm is too wide; although photographers can get closest to the athletes without being a part of the events, it's still not long enough to capture the action. You'll need a telephoto lens like your 18-200.

Open your aperture as wide as you can. Aim for a 1/320 or faster shutter speed; 1/500 should be best. Change your ISO accordingly to match the exposure.

The best way for you to shoot these events would be to enable 1/3-stop ISO control and set it to S (shutter priority) and auto ISO. Then if you set the shutter speed to something really fast like 1/640 or 1/500, then the camera will take care of the aperture (which would be fully open, normally) and the ISO (which it will change to get the exposure).
 
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I'd do shutter priority, and bump up your ISO to compensate for as best as you can.
 
Interested to see what you grabbed?

I was working in the diving so it would be interesting to see if I made it into any of your shots!

The lighting was actually brighter than you think as we had some cameras working at up to 1000fps.
 
I subscribed to this thread in the hope that you will upload some photos. Please do so.
 
Hi all, I put the camera in shutter mode as per your instructions and iso on auto, so thanks for the advice, the pictures were OK, whats the best way to put the pictures up, do I need to upload them to flickr or something first what the best way?

Thanks
 
juanm said:
Phantom cameras? Which ones? No flickering? :)
Click to expand...

As it was live broadcast something like a phantom with it's tiny buffer isn't going to do!

We were using Hi-Motion cameras (http://www.hi-motion.net)

There was flickering from the house lights but not as bad as beijing.

kickingk said:
Hi all, I put the camera in shutter mode as per your instructions and iso on auto, so thanks for the advice, the pictures were OK, whats the best way to put the pictures up, do I need to upload them to flickr or something first what the best way?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Depends what you want to do with them. If it's just a quick and simple approach then imageshack.us will allow you to upload and post here for some feedback.

As a more permanent solution to show friends and family, post on here and come back to signing up to a flickr account may not be a bad thing!
 
If you are limited by your aperture and light but need a fast shutter then there is a trick you can do where you set the exposure lower and then brighten it back up in Photoshop RAW. You can start at -2EV and go down from there and see how far you can go before you can no longer successfully brighten the RAW and have it look good. That will allow you to shoot 2 stops faster (or more).

Set the camera to shutter mode, ISO to auto, pick your shutter speed and lower the EV and youll see the ISO dropping as you go down in stops, do it until you get an acceptable ISO.

The only side effect is a higher contrast image, which may end up looking better, a lot of people shoot -2EV so they can get more contrast without blowing out highlights.
 
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zombiecakes said:
If you are limited by your aperture and light but need a fast shutter then there is a trick you can do where you set the exposure lower and then brighten it back up in Photoshop RAW.
Click to expand...

This is exactly the same as upping ISO in camera IMO and therefore I would suggest using the higher ISO so as to check that you have the shot you want instead of having to squint at an under exposed image to see whats actually in the shot.
 
You will get a better looking image with less noise if you shoot at a lower ISO and brighten it up in your RAW editor. If you have to go over ISO 1600 to get the shutter speed you want then I would strongly recommend shooting at a lower EV instead so you can stay at 800/1600 where the camera still performs well (depends on the camera, new ones are way better at high ISO). An underexposed RAW file has an amazing amount of room to be brightened before it starts degrading.
 
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kickingk said:
f/5,6 1/800 sec. ISO-6400 200mm


DSC_0249 by KTailor1, on Flickr



DSC_0250 by KTailor1, on Flickr


DSC_0251 by KTailor1, on Flickr


DSC_0252 by KTailor1, on Flickr
Click to expand...

They're okay. The image quality is definitely usable. But I think more mid-dive shots would have been better. Then again, the last shot is very well done! I'm kinda jealous of your opportunity to shoot these divers.
The divers are definitely frozen, so whatever you did to get that exposure worked very nicely ;)

As regard to the -2 EV processing, that's essentially push processing. I really DO NOT recommend it because at ISOs higher than 1600, the dynamic range of any camera is so low that whatever push processing you do will result in artifacts that will look worse than high ISO noise. At least with a higher ISO, you can remove the noise and get a usable image; with push processing, you're left with unnatural colors and pretty permanent artifacts.
 
Pretty decent shots given the limitations. You got the exposure pretty spot on and the noise isn't too bad either. Good work! :)

I have to wonder if the Nikon 28-300mm lens would have been a great alternative in this situation. Especially with a bit of black tape over the logo - you'd have had a bit more reach, without being physically longer than 30cm.
 
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