Stanton - You sound as though you are a general photographer with
years of experience, and take photos in all types of environments.
Only going on 20 years... Still learning.
Thus, you must take or have taken photos of indoor sports, where
subject distances are constantly changing.
Honestly, of all the assignments I've handled, indoor sports is the one that I have the least experience in, though I have done a
bit . Most recently I shot some hockey pix, but "indoor sports" can mean a lot of different things. Indoor soccer will probably require a different approach than gymnastics or martial arts.
Sometimes, the shots
may be semi-wide angle; whereas, other shots may require a longer
focal length, and when doing so may bypass other subjects which
otherwise would be in the field of view of the camera's lens.
I'm sure indoor action photographers, as well as myself, would like
to hear what techniques you use with auto thyristor flashes for
varying subject distance situations.
To really do indoor sports (hockey, basketball) correctly, you need to have flash heads with a gazillon watt seconds in the corners and in the rafters of the stadium with multichannel radio triggers. Few of us have the luxury of such equipment nor the blessing of stadium management to set it all up.
To use the hockey shoot as an example, I don't use flash at all. I use a long, fast zoom on a monopod. I had my D1x on ISO 800, my f stop wide open (2.8), WB on auto, and exposure mode set to aperture priority. I figured that whatever I got would be better than flash on camera. Though on-camera strobe might provide basic illumination, it will not provide a sense of shape and texture. Light eminating from the camera postion will put all the shadows on the far size of the subject. Sometimes its better than nothing, but flash on camera is far from my first choice for any type of photography. Though weddings are no longer the mainstay of my photography business, even then almost everything was lit with no less than two, and sometimes three and even four lights!
However, if you're going to use flash on camera, the main thing to be concerned with is the "carrying power" of the strobe. Will the strobe have enough power to provide enough exposure at the subject's distance from the camera? If its within range of a given thyristor setting, most of the time I'll just set the camera and blast. Though not perfect, with film the thyristor settings almost always put me in printable range. If things are more critical, I'll actually go totally manual and use distance "zones". . Hockey and soccer are much tougher to determine where the action will happen, so using zone settings is tough. Again, if you have no choice but to use flash on camera, make certain you have enough power, combined with ISO and aperture to get good exposure.
A lot of what works is simply a matter of trial and error. If you're fortunate enough to be shooting digital, you have a leg up because you can check and verify your exposures. Negative film usually has enough latitude that you can get in the ballpark and print acceptable images. Exposing for chromes is the toughest photographic medium (IMO) because it has less latitude than negs.
I know I've been rambling and not sure if I answered your question. Let me know if I need to elaborate further. I'll just shut up now and let some more experienced sports photographers answer now.
Good luck,
Stanton
