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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

I shoot basketball college games and never use a flash. DxO noise reduction software lets me crank the ISO up to crazy levels so I can deal with the low light. My weapon of choice is Sony’s 135mm/1.8 GM which gets results from players on the close side.

If you try to follow the ball you find that almost everybody is facing away from you or obstructed by someone else. I came to the conclusion that sports photography is really people photography so I started looking for good portraits (open shots on the players are rare) and that sometimes I’d get lucky and get good action.

This viewpoint improved my basketball photography but improved my other photography more because people’s motion is more predictable doing almost anything else. I’m getting real work doing running events now, like

https://www.yogile.com/strides-of-march-2025

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The running pictures are awesome work. For a lot of families your pictures might be the only pictures they have of the runners running.

My comment was about how NBA “press pool” level photographs are made (and big time college hoops). They use flash but the flashes are big, wireless and up in the rafters (i.e. indirect). Basically, the press pool has access to studio lighting and can shoot at low iso and narrow apertures…and of course they have access to great shooting positions.

Luck is always a factor…the photographer in Liefer’s iconic photo is just looking at the backside of Ali’s big white trunks…

https://neilleifer.com/collections/muhammad-ali?srsltid=AfmB...

But for what it is worth, when I was shooting a lot of high school soccer, better action shots came from “skating to where the puck is going.” And turning off spray and pray because there’s only one best moment to click the shutter and mechanical sympathy is the best way to get close.

And fewer photos meant less grunt work later…modulo pleasing an editor or the mother of the bride. It was a pure hobby, not a jobby.

When that phase of my life passed, I shifted toward tilt-shifts and movements and doubled down on one shot at a time.

> when I was shooting a lot of high school soccer, better action shots came from “skating to where the puck is going.”

way to mix sports metaphors. /s

to get better action shots, it really helps to understand the nuance of the sport itself. being able to anticipate off the ball movement while being able to anticipate a play developing will all help you improve your luck to be pointing your lens in the right place.

I followed a specific NCAA football team for a season, and got to the point of anticipating plays and recognizing formations even though I'm not really a throwball fan. I'm much more of a proper football fan, and can do much better than skating to a puck metaphor as I know tactics much better and see how off the ball players are moving and why they are doing it. This definitely allowed for better action shots of players with the ball.

As anything, someone with specific knowledge of their subject will improve their luck over someone just there for some shots.

At the time I was refereeing a fair amount and so I was on the field anticipating player behavior and ball movement “in anger.” And for a bit of cash.

It informed my photography.

I unfortunately don't have a source but I remember hearing about some action photographers trying out 4K60 cameras set to a high shutter speed and basically shooting video clips instead of stills. They would emphasize proper framing, exposure, and focus instead of worrying about timing the shutter.

Later the photographer would review the video clips and choose the best frames for publication. For web and newswire distribution 4K resolution was good enough for them, and they indicated that it was very unlikely that the perfect shot would fall outside of each 1/60 second frame.

Doesn't need video anymore, high end cameras can run wild on taking picture after picture and start doing so before you even fully pressed the shutter, to account for human delays and the ones of the tech itself.

I mean we are talking about a part of photography where even back in the days of film a camera would run through a roll of film in seconds for exactly this sort of thing.

It amazes me that I can walk out of a game with 2000 images, I just read an article by someone who shot 9000 images of a game. With film it would cost at least $10 to buy and develop film for about 30 shots, so I'd be spending upwards of $600 to develop film. It's hard to be nostalgic for film when you see it that way.

(I still shoot images faster than I can process them, but it helps a lot that I got Keysticks working with lightroom so I can sit back and use an XBOX controller to scan through photos.)

I am thinking about shooting short video clips instead because I think those might do even better on social and let you tell stories that photos can't.

Later the photographer would

That’s why I prefer one-and-done. Making a photograph always creates future work…future chores.

For me, I enjoy the process of making pictures. I don’t enjoy the rest nearly as much. I would rather paint.

But I have always made pictures for a hobby. What makes sense when working for money doesn’t drive my process.

Meaning and or expression drive what I do. Documentary photography is not so much.

> Later the photographer would review the video clips and choose the best frames for publication.

That seems like an ML problem, or rather, a problem with an ML solution.

The other interesting thing about rafter strobes is the recharge rate: I could sometimes get two shots in a row, but more than that and the flashes could keep up. So the fast motor cameras weren’t that useful because you’d only get one or two blasts from the strobes because they had to charge for a few seconds. You really had to be good at timing the shot. Also during the big moments, you’d often get overexposed because all the other big news wires would be shooting the same shot at the same moment, so you’d get four sets of strobes blasting out your shot.

> The other interesting thing about rafter strobes is the recharge rate: I could sometimes get two shots in a row, but more than that and the flashes could keep up.

I'm somewhat surprised (although it's certainly a niche) that some of those larger flashes intended for commercial (sports, primarily) photography, don't have "dual capacitors", i.e. keep both charged and essentially recycle asynchronously.

> I came to the conclusion that sports photography is really people photography so I started looking for good portraits

That's an interesting realization you made, but what were you doing before that?

I'd also say that the flash comment was very uninformed. In any arena/stadium that the games/matches are broadcast, they will be lit properly in order for the cameras to have a proper exposure. This also means there's plenty of light for the photogs.

> I'd also say that the flash comment was very uninformed. In any arena/stadium that the games/matches are broadcast, they will be lit properly in order for the cameras to have a proper exposure. This also means there's plenty of light for the photogs.

That's not (entirely) accurate. Lighting for continuous light (e.g., TV broadcast) is quite different from still photography. NBA arenas, at least, absolutely ARE equipped with strobes in the rafters that are radio-activated from the camera.

Watch as the team comes down the court, and don't watch the players but watch the court, you will see the flashes reflect on the court (and apologies if you can't unsee them after, but they're not overly noticeable). As you say, there is a good amount of light, but if you want a tighter aperture or are shooting a player at high speed, you need more than the arena is lit for.

Further info:

- https://petapixel.com/2017/06/03/bright-flashes-nba-games-ma...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/nta77s/anyone_notice_a...

- https://imgur.com/a/puri1RN/

This is absolutely correct. Can confirm because I did NBA photography for many years.

the flash comment was very uninformed

https://youtu.be/1IyD1mLgyeM?si=FLVemqt1Dui4jLVU

If you are videoing for slow-mo you might have a 1/240 shutter speed.

If you want to freeze motion in a closeup. You want to be about an order of magnitude faster…and about two orders of magnitude faster than 30p.

In addition, video typically uses smaller sensors to improve depth of field at wide aperture — you don’t want bokka — and to keep lens size down (even though broadcast lenses are massive and six or seven figures).

And of course video tolerates a lot of motion blur and noise.

In other words, the fire truck doesn’t rely on garden hoses.

> I'd also say that the flash comment was very uninformed. In any arena/stadium that the games/matches are broadcast, they will be lit properly in order for the cameras to have a proper exposure.

Absolutely incorrect. The lighting at an average NBA game would require a high speed “film” — take a light meter next time you go and you won’t be able to get a fast enough shutter speed at a low enough ISO for a glossy shot. In the olden days, we’d have to push 800 ISO Fuji color film one or two stops unless we had stadium strobes. Maybe digital post processing is the norm these days, but watch an NBA game and at key moments, you’ll see strobes firing from the rafters. TV shutter speeds are slower than those used for still photography and additionally, TV lenses are gigantic and let in far more light. The typical sports still camera lens is the 300/2.8 or the 400/2.8 and even shooting at a 2.8 aperture, you still need a lot more light than the broadcast cameras.

In addition, ISO and shutter speed cannot light the subject 2/3 stop above ambient to create emphasis.

There are approximately zero scenes that would not benefit from well executed flash…though there are many were flash is impractical…

…doing the impractical is also known as magic.

Denoising and fast glass definitely works well and is versatile even in situations where you don't need fast action but you just don't have good lighting available. The only problem is this adds to time spent in post. If I have access to a strobe and a venue where I can use said strobe, I'm using it.

Nice work. I am surprised, though, that in many pictures the foot is cut off, despite having lots of space above the runner.

As we used to say, "two faces and a ball."

Whoa. Didn't expect to see the inside of Barton Hall this morning :).

Follow my profiles and you will see the inside of Barton and everything else Cornell

https://bsky.app/profile/up-8.bsky.social

https://mastodon.social/@UP8

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