Marlborough AYF Cheer-A-Palooza - 2017.04.22

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I took another shot at photographing cheer this weekend at the Marlborough, MA American Youth Football (AYF) Cheer-A-Palooza fundraising event at the Whitcomb Middle School. The event included several local vendors, a bouncy house for the kids and an exhibition by four Marlborough AYF squads and one Northborough/Southborough AYF squad. I have not been too pleased with how my previous attempts have gone and I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with different lenses, cameras and settings. I have a better idea of what settings to use on the camera and which lens/camera combinations work best. Ultimately, I would like to upgrade my gear to the Canon 1Dx II and do some more testing with fast lenses like the Canon EF 135mm f/2 and 85mm f/1.8 or the new Sigma 135mm f/1.8 Art. I hear that the Sigma is tack sharp and has a consistent focus but I don't know how fast the focus is.

When I arrived at the event I was surprised at how good the lighting was, especially for a middle school gymnasium. The reason that it was so bright is that there were open skylights along one whole side of the roof letting in natural light, despite the cloudy conditions outside. Unfortunately though, the event organizers decided to arrange the mats to have a more "intimate" event. This translates into poor conditions for a photographer because the bleacher seating came right up to the edge of the mats and the skylights in the roof were behind the cheerleaders causing a backlit situation. I was able to convince the organizers to move the seating back 5-6 feet but there still was not enough room to shoot head-on and I had to shoot at an angle at the cheerleaders left side. My bad luck continued into the routines as every one of the teams looked to their right when they were in their pyramids and I was shooting the back of their heads. Is that a thing or do I just have bad luck?

Since I did not have much room to work with and I wanted to get as many of the girls in the shots I decided to use the 7D Mark II with the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens. I wanted to use the 5D Mark III but I was also trying to do video and the widest lens I had left was the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art and even this was too wide on the cropped 7D. In the end the video did not work out, mainly because the 50mm lens was not wide enough and people walked in front of the camera, so I probably should have just used the 5D for the photos.

I shot in manual mode, wide open (f/2.8), the shutter speed set to 1/800th of a second, auto ISO limited to 12,800 and auto WB. With the lighting as good as it was the average ISO was 2500-3200 and the maximum was only 6400. Because the 7D has the flicker compensation I only had to do some minor exposure and tone adjustments, slight noise reduction and cropping in Lightroom. Links for the final galleries for each of the five performances are at the top of the page along with a gallery of general shots that I took of the event before the routines began.

Marlborough Sapphire Panthers

Marlborough Ruby Panthers

Marlborough Emerald Panthers

Marlborough Diamond Panthers

Algonquin T-Hawks

T-Hawk Cheer Practice Shoot - 2017.03.23

Gallery 1

Gallery 2

I have been trying to improve my skills for shooting cheering competitions and arranged to do two pre-meet shoots with the Northborough/Southborough AYF T-Hawk squad. Cheer presents a unique challenge because most events happen in dimly lit gymnasiums, generally flash is not allowed and the girls move pretty quickly requiring a fast shutter speed. My standard equipment includes the same gear that I used for the entire football season: a 7D Mark II and 5D Mark III along with the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II and the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lenses. I find that the 70-200mm lens is far too long for the facilities that I have shot in and the 24-70mm, although it is an f/2.8, is not quite fast enough to keep the ISO below 10000. For this shoot I took advantage of Adorama's generous return policy and tried out a new lens and pulled a rarely used lens from the bottom of my camera bag.

The first lens that I tried is the Canon EF 135mm f/2. Although this is a fairly old design, dating back to 1996, it gets solid reviews for sharpness and focus speed/accuracy so I figured it would be a decent candidate for cheer buying me a full stop and allowing me to cut the ISO in half. The second lens that I put through the paces is the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM that generally sits at the bottom of my camera bag. I don't really have anything against this lens but I just have not found too many uses for it. This should be very similar to the 135mm lens and gives an extra 1/3 stop of light at the cost of reduced reach.

Below, on the left, is a sample shot with the 135mm lens at f/2, 1/800sec and ISO 12,800 with the 5D Mark III. The lens does focus quickly and accurately and I only had a few missed focus shots. The lighting was very poor so even with the full stop advantage from the aperture I still had to shoot at ISO 12,800. The noise from the 5D was noticeable in the full screen shot but after some minor noise reduction the final shot is decent. On the right is a similar shot with the 85mm lens at f/1.8, 1/800sec and also ISO 12,800. I think that the two lenses are very similar in sharpness and focus accuracy but I do like the look of the photo from the 135mm lens slightly better. This might have to do with the exposure and I could probably make the two shots to look a lot more similar.

Left: Canon EF 135mm f/2, Right: Canon EF 85mm f/1.8

In the end I decided to return the 135mm lens for two reasons. The first is that it was not significantly different from the 85mm lens and I could not justify spending $1,000 for it. The second reason is that Sigma announced their new 135mm f/1.8 lens on the same day that I purchased this lens and Canon followed suit announcing a $200 price drop on their lens. I could not have had worse timing. Based on the initial reviews of the Sigma lens, if I am going to have a 135mm lens in my bag that is likely the one I want. I also took several shots with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 lens but with the lighting as bad as it was the ISO was 20,000 and the shots were not really usable. Links to the full galleries can be found at the top of the page.

Regional Cheer Championships - 2016.11.13

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This weekend brought a new challenge that I have been hoping to attempt - photographing a cheer leading competition. I have read a bunch on photography blogs about the unique challenges of photographing fast moving action in poorly lit gymnasiums and wanted to try my hand at it. I do not know one thing about cheer so I brought both 5D Mark III fitted with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens and the 7D Mark II fitted with the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II lens. I found that the 70-200mm lens was far too long for the setting and I used the 24-70mm lens on the 7D for all of the shots. I was a little amazed at how fast things move and how many photos I took in a short period of time. I typically take 800-1000 photos during a 2 hour football game but took about 550 photos during a 150 second cheer performance. It's the first time I have had the camera slow down due to buffering (they were RAW after all). In the end, I would give myself a solid B, but I am a bit disappointed in the photos and it all comes down to user error. The first mistake that I made was not getting to the event early enough. I only saw one routine before the Algonquin team performed and I found myself shooting from behind the team. I guess I should have noticed the judges table at the other end of the gym but, hey, it was my first time at a cheer event. My second mistake was not getting the correct white balance set up ahead of time but I was able to fix this fairly easily because I shot in RAW. My biggest mistake was how I set up the exposure - I opted to shoot in manual mode wide open (f/2.8), the shutter speed set to 1/800th of a second and auto ISO. I forgot to limit the upper ISO so most of the shots were at ISO 10,000 and have a lot of noise. I should have dropped the shutter speed to around 1/250th of a second, timed my shots for the pauses and probably used my EF 85mm f/1.8 USM lens on the 5D. This lens might have been a bit too long but the wider aperture, which is about a full stop faster than the f/2.8, would have allowed a much lower ISO setting and the photos would have cleaned up much better. So, there is my little secret - the reason that there are no close ups is that the photos are too noisy and they would have looked like crap. I tried to clean up the photos in Lightroom by pushing the luminance and detail settings pretty hard but but had to back off in the end because you get a lot of visual artifacts in the dark regions when you go too far.

 If I get the chance to shoot a cheer event again I will do a much better job based on what I learned today. It would be interesting to hear feedback on what the most preferred shots are. I like action shots where you can see facial expression but I think that it is important to see all of the competitors in most of the shots. I think that it really takes two photographers to shoot a cheer event.