High Key advice

[Wes]

Okay, here's the scenario...

This past weekend I'm in Lewisville shooting some youth football photos for a friend of mine (his kid plays on the team). If you remember the weather from Saturday you'll know that it was VERY sunny. The kids on both teams were also wearing very bright uniforms (bright yellow with white helmet on one team, all white uniforms and helmets on the other team).

I wasn't real happy with the shoot. Most of the kids faces were deep in the shadows of their helmets. If I try to bring out the features of a players face, the rest of the shot gets blown out because of all of the bright colors.

How do you guys handle this? Obviously, the kids and action are too far away for a flash so I cannot provide my own fill lighting. I've seen others get good shots in the same lighthing conditions, so I know it can be done.

[Serrator]

xmenporsche, did you shoot using raw? If so you might want to think about doing blended exposures manually or an HDR program. If you shot in raw try saving one version out to bring out the shadow details and then save another version for the highlights, then using PS or some other HDR program you could blend them. I have Photomatix, so if you want you could send me the two jpegs from the raw and I would be happy to try it for you so you could see if it would help.

[NathanJK]

Serrator has a good suggestion if you only want to keep a FEW pictures. Otherwise, maybe something like a better beamer would have helped with a flash for fill. I'd probably err on the side of blowing out the whites of the uniform and helmet and preserve good exposure for their faces if the other two options aren't right for your situation.

[Wes]

Fred - No, I did not shoot RAW. I don't have enough memory cards to capture 200-300 images in RAW. I appreciate the offer to help!

Nathan - I've thought about getting a better beamer. What kind of reach does it have? Can I actually expect to illuminate a subject that's 20 yards away?

[René]

Wes, with pictures that you already have could you try creating a duplicate layer, dodging in their faces, then adjusting the opacity to something that doesn’t look washed out? I know it doesnt help answer your question really, but might help save those that you have already taken. That is, if you havent already started doing something else.

[Wil_Bloodworth]

Wes, buy a cheap PQI 2GB memory card at Fry's... and shoot RAW. You'll be much happier doing that. And that card is about $25 with the rebate.

- Wil

[Wes]

Peg - I'll certainly give it a shot. Thanks!

Wil - Are PQI cards any good? Since those images only exist in my camera until I download them into my computer, I don't want to skimp by buying cheap quality and risk having it fail on me at an inopportune time. If the PQI cards are of good quality, do they have a very fast write speed for that price? I am on the verge of getting new cards, but I only want to look at stuff that writes at 133x or better.

[Wil_Bloodworth]

Wes,

I have two PQI cards and they work nicely. They are not as fast as my ExtremeIII SanDisk cards but they are almost as good. The only way to tell the difference is to take continuous shots at 5+ FPS for about 4 seconds. The card's write speed is only noticable slower when you do that. Other than that... no differences.

- Wil

[Toad]

Great tip on the memory cards. I am planning a trip to Puerto Vallarta the week after next and was wondering what to do about memory.
Toad