Nikon D300s Backlighting and High Contrast Football Shoot

<p>I have been using Nikon digital cameras since 2004 for outdoor action sports. I am currently shooting football in bright sunlight, and I have noticed that when I photograph a subject and I am more than 20 degrees off from the direction of the sunlight, the cameras (D300, D300s, D700, D3s) all have a problem dealing with the high contrast between the sunlit areas of the subject and the shadowed areas. Are there any settings anyone can share to help improve the results? When I use the active D lighting options in the camera, I notice an improvement, but I also notice a degradation in the speed of the shutter. Also, when shooting action sports with these cameras and the subject is back lit, I can't seem to get as sharp of an image. Any tips on dealing with these high contrast situations would be appreciated.</p>

<p>Kevin... I shoot a lot of field sports, and in bright sunlight, I almost always expose 1/3 (sometimes 2/3) under. I look for the blinking highlights on the uniforms, and dial down until I don't get the blinkies. Shadows get deeper this way, but I'm ok with that. The action is not in shadow. Having said that, in football, players faces are pretty much always in shadow due to the helmet. <br>

I don't use active D lighting... if I need to bring out shadow details, I want to control it myself, rather than have it automated incamera. <br>

Ron</p>

<p><em> "but I also notice a degradation in the speed of the shutter"</em> - seems like you do not control the exposure and picture taking process yourself.</p>

<p>In this case you would be better off with cameras that have automated <strong>scene modes for most ocassions</strong>, like sport mode in D7000. Cameras like D300, D700, D3S do not have those automated scene modes, and it is expected that the photographer knows much more.</p>

 

<p>IME, D-lighting does less than you can do by using the curves tool in PS or GIMP. Also, shooting raw will give you more post-processing options to tame high contrast.<br>

Here's a quick before/after comparison of what the curves tool can do to brighten up a backlit scene and reduce contrast. The saturation was increased slightly as well to compensate for the tone-curve adjustment.</p><div></div>

<p>Frank, you misunderstood. What I am saying is using Active D Lighting, the frames per second performance degrades. I don't want scene modes, I shoot all my outdoor sports manually. It just seems like these cameras candle handle this sort of contrast properly without a lot of post editing.</p>

<p>.....And here's the GIMP curves setting used.</p>

<p>BTW, the D700 has one of the best dynamic ranges available. If it can't tame the contrast, then nothing else will!</p><div></div>

<p>If you shoot in RAW, then you can salvage more of the shots. Active D lighting doesn't do anything that you can't replicate if you do your own processing. The D700 and D3s are the cat's meow when it comes to dynamic range (but the D300 is no slouch itself), so if they aren't doing it for you, then you're doing something wrong.</p>

<p>Photography literally translates to "painting with light." So, no light means that there's no paint. Of course if something is in shadow, it won't have the detail of something that has sunlight hitting it. You also are likely underexposing, consider changing the meter to centerweighted or spot. This is counter to Ron's advice, but it's for opposite situations. His excellent advice is for situations where you're getting blown highlights from overexposure, which you don't want with bright subjects. If you're taking a picture of a backlit player, you need to overexpose to get the detail in the shadows out.<br>

What shooting modes are you in? Do you watch your histogram at all? From your post, it seems that despite your long stint as a photographer, you haven't spent much time learning the basics of photography. Many people assume that if they get better cameras, then they will take better photos, but the converse is usually true, since the more advanced camera has settings that just get in a beginner's way. Try picking up a simpler camera like the D90, and see if your photography improves. Take some photo classes too.</p>

<p>I know how to edit these images in Photoshop. The fact is I take 1500 pictures per football game and choose up to 400 of them for resale so I'd prefer to get it right in the camera.</p>

<p>Ariel, you are quite wrong, I know all aspects of photography, and this seems to be a limitation of these cameras. I have seen better output from far lesser retail cameras in these scenarios. As I said, I shoot manually and rely heavily on the histogram.</p>

<p>What I am looking for here is people's input into Modifying Picture Controls as it seems the default settings of the D300/s can't handle the contrast depicted in this scenario. I don't need classes and I don't need a cheaper camera and I don't need scene slection buttons. I already know how to use the cameras I have. Page 156 of the D300s manual talks about how to alter the default Contrast settings. Has anyone played around with this?</p>

<p>Kevin, if you know all that and have rejected all the advice offered here, then I suggest you're now on your own. Why not just try the contrast adjustment settings mentioned in the manual instead of posting here?</p>

<p>Maybe Rodeo Joe because I am looking for people's input as to what they have done so I can try it. I am sure I am not the only one in this situation. I have seen the results of other professional photographers standing right next to me on the sidelines - and they are using Canon with the default Contrast settings and they perform much better. I have seen mothers with point and shoot cameras even coming out better. Again, I am talking about when the sunlight is like at a 30 degree angle or more off the subject and part of the subject is in the shadows.</p>

<p>Kevin - how about if you post a sample or two that shows the problem you are talking about. </p>

 

<p>Well, unless Canon have made a quantum leap in the contrast ability of their cameras since the 5D - I can say for a fact that my D700 outperforms the 5D by a country mile in being able to handle high contrast situations. And 1500 shots per game? Perhaps less would be more? Or why not just frame grab from an HD video?</p>

<p>Rodeo Joe, 1500 shots encompasses 1 hour of pregame, 4 quarters or more of football, plus Cheer at halftime. I shoot the whole game, weed out 11-1200 images to come up with the best 300 or so. And why add such comments that don't contribute anything other than for us to see what kind of person you are? This forum is used by many to contribute positively to a community. Why act like this?<br>

Ron, I will post an unedited original when I get home, but try to picture a ball carrier wearing lets say a white jersey is running towards the left goal line at he's at mid field at the 50 and you are standing on the near sideline at the 40 (on the left side of the 50). The sun is coming in from the 30 yard line (30 yards to your right) and its setting. The front on the ball carrier is black as his his face. If he's carrying the ball in his right hand, you can't see it because its also in the shadows. If there is a tackler coming in from the other side, the shadow cast from the ball carrier lands on him so he's black too. Whatever is receiving direct sunlight in this scenario is exposed perfectly and the colors are vibrant, but everything in the shadows are black. D lighting helps with the subject but it makes the background look unnatural.</p>

<p>DxO Labs testing shows the D700, D300s, D3s, and Canon 1Ds Mark III and 1D Mark IV as all having 12 stops of dynamic range. There are some cameras with higher DR, including several Nikons (D3x, D5100, D7000) but no other Canons and certainly no small sensor P & S cameras. How are you evaluating this big difference in DR? Do you shoot RAW? How you have your camera set up makes a big difference if you're shooting JPEGs.</p>

<p>Not shooting RAW. Need to get it right in the camera in JPEG or it would take forever to edit a game's worth of pictures.</p>

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>Not shooting RAW. Need to get it right in the camera in JPEG or it would take forever to edit a game's worth of pictures.</p>

</blockquote>

 

 

<p>Suggest you shoot a FEW RAW images of the kind that give you problems. Develop these in LR and create presets for each of (say) three possible situations. Then shoot the next game in RAW, select images and batch-process them. 'Get it right in camera' is a myth, especially if you are shooting fast-moving action with changing light. You could try switching presets in camera, but it's a lot easier in front of a computer.</p>

<p>Kevin... try Photomechanic. It was meant for this. You can shoot raw, with no time penalty. I do it all the time. </p>

<p>Coincidentally, I recently answered a similar question at bottom of here <a href="../sports-photography-forum/00ZXm2">http://www.photo.net/sports-photography-forum/00ZXm2</a><br>

For back lighting, I like to give an extra stop or so above metered reading and keep it in manual. It should give you a nice result even if you don't bring out more shadow highlight in post process. Though frankly, I usually try to be on the side that I can shoot back lighting as I find it to give nicer resulting photos and avoiding the harsh, flat frontal lit scene, for high contrast scene such as front lighting on a sunny day that I can't avoid when following downs, I sometimes like to dial down 1/3-2/3 stop from metered, also in manual mode. Having said that, there are occasions that I'd leave meter in matrix and shutter priority when the action goes back and forth between brightly lit and dark shadow area. I would sacrify some highlight detail to make sure shadow area is well exposed, especially that there are many African American players in the game.</p><div></div>

<p>Depending on your subject distance, fill flash might be enough to bring the shadows up to a reasonable level. If you can set a flash at -2 it isn't going to do anything to the highlights but will definitely light up any shadows that are within range. (better beamer is an option if distances are far and you're using telephoto.)</p>

<p>Kevin... I just shot a game tonight, and during halftime I did a quick test. I pointed the camera (D3s) at the clock (digital, precision to seconds) and let the frames rip for 3 seconds. I did it twice... once with D-lighting set to NL, and once to off. In both cases, I got 8 consecutive frames of the clock showing the same exact time before the clock advanced to the next second -- which means 8 frames per second. I know there are a lot of factors that do impact the max frame rate, but I proved to my own satisfaction that d-lighting is not one of them. </p>

<p>Ron that's interesting because I have even read Nikon's own admission that when using Active D lighting the camera can do no better than 4 or 5 frames per second. "Activating D-lighting cuts the size of the buffer in JPEG capture, thus reducing the frames per second rate."</p>

<p>Kevin, <br>

maybe creating and running some actions/scripts (low/normal/strong curves to lift up the shadows) in Photoshop could speed-up high-volume processing to a reasonable level. <br>

I too have trouble with harsh light and prefer the curves-tool in PS over D-Lighting at least for backlighting. Lowering the contrast-settings is an option but will give you very flat pictures in backlighting.<br>

I don't look at the histogram but set my cameras to „blinking highlights" and don't care if parts of the background or trikots are over-exposed, as long as the skin-tones are not washed-out. <br>

Fill flash is in my opinion not practicable for most outdoor-sports.</p>

 

<p>Kevin... the buffer point would be interesting, but I only shoot in raw. I can't think of a reason to shoot JPGS. I've heard your argument before that raw files take longer, but with photomechanic, raw files run at the same speed as jpegs. </p>