Those of you who know me know full well when “kodak moments” are happening, its about impossible for me to be without a camera. I can’t help it. It’s a pleasure and a complete addiction to document, capture, hunt images.

Community Night at the YMCA

Springfield Township had their community night at the Powel Crosley YMCA last night. Local businesses were invited to come and set up a table. Having a table by the pool is great, especially being near the action of the diving board. The event was 6-9pm, so shooting into the setting sun against a dark background provides a fun challenge. And water balloon fights are always a summer favorite – with a long lens of course! The farther back from the water with a nice camera the better right?

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Lens for Action & Background Blur

I did attach a big flash, and used it for a few of the portrait-style images I shot. I used 1 lens, the 80-200 f2.8 Nikon, set between f 4 and f 2.8 to blur the background and shoot as fast as possible to catch spraying water & diving kids at iso 400 with a Nikon D300s. The more you back up and zoom in, plus the farther your subject is from the background. the more blur you can achieve in your shots.

File Size & Cropping

I almost always shoot at Large Fine Jpeg. This gives me enough pixels to crop my images when editing, and do whatever retouching I may need to do. At an event like this, honestly, there’s very little retouching. But I did crop the diving shots – the pool is large and I was shooting on the opposite side, near my table in case someone had questions.
Large – pixel dimensions.
Fine – fine compression. When the file is compressed in camera, there is less compression, fewer pixels tossed, more ability to crop & edit.
Have a great summer! Visit our workshops page to join an upcoming class.