Branching out, help please

[tonylarcombe]

Hi, I primarily do weddings and portraits but not enough work as

yet to quit my day job :-( I've recently been given the

opportunity to shoot a kids swim meet, early in Feb. The kids age

range is 9 and up I believe, 200 swimmers, 100 for each team. I

agree weddings can be fast paced but this is different, any

suggestions, this'll be a first for me !

 

I'm guessing my flash won't be allowed, so I'll probably need to up

the ISO, I've got the 70-200, hopefully that's enough reach. Shoot

in the 20D's Sports mode ?

 

Tony,

[lex_jenkins]

You should check some of the archived threads on the sports forum.

 

Depending on the venue you can probably get away with ISO 800 and just your 70-200 at or near the widest aperture. But flash will help open up the shadows so check to see whether it's okay. Schools are less picky about use of flash than some pro events. It doesn't take a lot of flash to open up shadows in the faces so folks may not mind the relatively minor pops.

 

Don't rely on autoexposure modes. It's too easy to fool due to backlighting from artificial lights or window light. You could try exposure compensation but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle compared with manual metering.

 

Indoor lighting tends to be pretty consistent. However in the worst places the light can vary as much as a full stop between the pools of light and shadow. Sometimes I'll bracket in three shot groups, one normal, one -1/3 or -2/3 EV, one +1/3 or +2/3 EV. Other times I'll just deal with the exposure variations in post processing.