From the Dugout
May 3rd, 2007 by John Setzler
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Tonight, I visited Hickory High School for a game against the Bandys Trojans. It was raining about 45 minutes before game time, and it just kept raining. I knew there wasn’t a chance that this game would be postponed, because it’s late in the school season and the opportunities to make them up are not available. I have a similar situation coming up tomorrow night at another local high school. I’ll be covering a soccer game, and the weather forecast is for rain all day tomorrow as well. This game will be played unless there is lightning, so I’ll have to go out again.
I hate shooting in the rain. I can’t hold an umbrella and control the camera at the same time. I think my objectives need to change a little when it’s raining and I’m stuck covering sports. I think I’m going to try to make the rain the story rather than the sports action itself somehow. It’s already difficult to get a sports action shot when the light is poor. In most bad weather cases, I find myself shooting at ISO 1600 with an f/2.8 lens and only being able to get shutter speeds of 1/200″ or so, which just won’t work. I can use my flash, but in the rain, that creates rather ugly photos. Every little raindrop between my camera and my subject lights up like lights on a Christmas tree. The other option is just to terribly underexpose my photos and use Photoshop to salvage them in post processing. I suppose ISO 3200 is a third option. When I underexpose an ISO 1600 photo and bring it back up to snuff in photoshop, the digital noise is pretty bad. So maybe a less underexposed ISO 3200 image would be the way to go.
I think I’ll give that a try tomorrow night.
Anyone wanna come hold an umbrella? ;)