Toying with Lighting

[Foxman]

What I would like to do is some team and individual player pose shots for area schools as well as get into some senior and portrait work. I am thinking for out door fill light as well as indoor lighting I could get by initially with using a two flash set up using two umbrella's such as these Adorama 40" umbrellas U40BC Adorama 40" White Interior Umbrella with Removeable Black Cover. These can be reflective and shoot through umbrellas. I picked up two light stands for $20.00, grab a couple of Umbrella holders $30.00 and another flash such as one of the "Professional" Vivitar 285HV's for $89.00 and I am in business....yes?

If you have children that play sports, you know the shots I am talking about. For the mear cost of your left arm you get a team shot, a couple of 5x7's and a hand full of wallets of little johnny to give to grandma.

Thoughts?

 

[Derrel]

Well, you'll also need some heavy sandbags to keep those lightweight light stands from falling over in the breeze. Lightweight aluminum stands are kind of top-heavy with an umbrella on them ,and many consider them inadequate for outdoor use compared with heavy turtle-base stands like Avengers or Matthews C stands. Umbrellas act like Sails outdoors in the breeze. The "hot,new thing" in team sports are the 60 inch or so Paul C. Buff parabolic light modifiers or PLM's,which are super-efficient.

Those small umbrellas are not very efficient, and outdoors there's not much need for umbrellas if they are just being used as fill lights. A small umbrella will not do much for your lighting if it's being used as a fill light for a team photo outdoors--you might just as well use the speedlight bare beyond 10 feet if all you have is a 285's output.

I think you might be oversimplifying the whole team/sports photography business a bit. There's a fair amount of workflow issues that also need to be dealt with, as well as competition; in some areas, individual leagues have contracts that only allow one person or company to do the for-sale shots.

 

[JimmyO]

First off if your shooting the portrairs outdoors for the teams, shooting a flash into the umbrella wont be powerful enough for anything more then a headshot if its sunny out.


Yes your gonna want sandbags.

Your also gonna need triggers.

And yes the league chairmen make the calls on photography, and there most likely gonna choose the pro with the monoblock setup, a laptop to scan the price forms, and a complete magazine of picture packages over you even if you will do it for cheaper.