F.A.O. Tom Wilko - Photography at Swimming Club

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Hi, I have searched the forum and you mentioned a couple of times that you were going to do, (have done), some photography at your swimming club. I have been asked to do some for my club, and would greatly appreciate some pointers.

I am at work atm, so will post a couple of pics later from a test session I did at the club yesterday. I was trying to get a feel for the environment and have realised it is quite a bit darker than first thought, so have just bought a 550EX Speedlite and stofen off the bay to help out with the lighting a bit.
My kit at present is a 300D with stock lens and a 90-300 zoom.

Any help or guidance from any one else also greatly appreciated
 
Hello,

Funny this should come up actually as I never did get round to doing it as yet but will be doing it within the next 2/3 weeks for definate as part of a publicity shoot for the club I am associated with.

Things that have occurred to me as well in the silly amount of time I spend around and in swimming pools is the generally poor light. I am luckily in that I will have the choice of 2 pools to shoot at when we organise the day, and 1 of the pools is extremely well let whereas the other has poor council lit tungsten lighting.

I am going to avoid using flash if possible, as this can put swimmers off, however if light is really poor then that may be your only option. Keep the shutter speed as high as possible (above 1/250 to avoid to much blur) and get low to the ground to get on a level with the swimmers.

A lot of my background research to shooting swimmers has come from people over at the fredmiranda.com boards, as well as my own knowledge of swimming itself. Should be fun, recent world swimming championships should help you with trying to get some good angles and types of shots - http://www.melbourne2007.com.au/

I will be using a Canon 350d, 70-200 F/4 L lens and the 50mm F/1.8. I am expecting the 50mm not to be able to focus fast enough but it should be interesting none the less.

On the Frontcrawl, Breastroke and Butterfly it will be best to shoot as the swimmer is in the breathing/recovery phase as this will show the action best. Backstroke I will be looking for behind the swimmer as they head down the pool. Getting people on the turn is also good...also watch out to make sure you don't get to many randoms in the shot so it is noticeably a training session you are shooting.

Will post up when I have done my shots but will be interested to see yours :)
 
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Cheers for the reply.
I am home from work now so as promised here are a couple of pics from yesterdays test session. I took a few just to get some idea of what to expect, from lighting etc.
As you can see light is the main problem, it was purely natural light from a few side windows on one side of the pool, nothing from the far side and nothing from above.
james2.jpg





becki.jpg



I think as I am limited to the 90-300 at 4.5-5.6 I will need a flash most likely with diffuser to help pick out detail in faces etc.

Basically we are thinking along the lines of maybe a calendar, or maybe a guess the swimmer type quiz, blank out faces or just show one arm etc, to help raise funds for a training camp to Hungary later in the year.
Possibly even if the shots start coming out ok, we could sell some shots to parents.

Anyway as usual any and all critiques greatly appreciated.

Enjoy (hopefully!!)
 
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Cool, what post processing have you done on these as they look sharp but the photos look quite low quality on my monitor here. Would be interested to see the images saved as a higher quality JPEG setting.
 
Post processing was a bit of cropping and straightening/rotating, then "one touch photo fix" from paint shop pro IX, (still need to play around with settings really to get the best out of post processing have only just got the program a couple of weeks ago), then saved as small jpeg so that it does not take too long to load on here.
Will post a link to the original file, when I get home in about an hour or so, then you can see the real thing.


Edit:
Oh Dear have been a bit of a noob, and managed to overwrite the original files with the post processed ones, DOH, :o
 
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