Tech Notes

Here's what I currently shoot with during roller derby bouts.

Camera:

• Nikon D3 body.
• I sometimes also use a Nikon D40 as a second camera. It's small and lightweight and is pretty smart re: exposure in a variety of situations.

Lens:

• Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 VR when action is on.
• During intermission or at the end of the bout, I switch to a wider lens. Currently I vary this between the Nikkor 14-24 f2.8 and the Nikkor 24-85 f3.5-4.5G. The latter has a better zoom range, but it's just too darn slow to be useful in a lot of venues.
• What I really wish is that I had a second camera, a Nikon D700, with a Nikkor 20-70mm f2.8 on it. I'd use this for both wide shots throughout the night and pre- and post-game shots. Ahhh. Then my life would be perfect. :-)

(Here's the awesome 14-24 at work. The only thing wrong is that I have to stand about 2 feet away from the skaters to get a shot like this, which would be just too dangerous during a live bout.)

Flash:

• On the camera a Nikon SB800. Connected to this, an external battery pack.
• Often I also use a remote Nikon SB600 to give highlights.

(The off-camera flash at work, giving a wonderful highlighted edge to Reefer E, Freddy Kruelgirl and Tin Lizzy.)

Settings:

• I set the camera to ISO 4000, which is a good trade-off between noise and speed.
• I mount the flash and set it to TTL BL, and synch it with the shutter rear curtain. Yes, the flash would fire faster if I set it manually, but I prefer to get the more subtle light effects that are possible with TTL BL. (See below.)
  
• The flash has one of Nikon's amber-colored gels on it, and I manually set the white balance to somewhere in the 3800K range. In this way the foreground (lit with flash) and background (lit by arena light) have the same color temperature, so they match nicely. Otherwise you get normal-looking skaters in front of an amber-colored crowd.
  
• Off-camera flash, if any, is set up using manual settings. It works just fine this way and wastes no time (or batteries) on pre-flashes.
  
• The camera is in shutter priority mode, with shutter speed anywhere from 1/30 to 1/120, depending on how streaky I want the shots to look.
• Focus is Continuous; if I shoot from the inside of the track I have it on center-weighted dynamic; if I'm shooting from the outside, I set it on full-frame auto. However, I do something that some Nikon cameras allow: I disable focus being triggered by the shutter button, so that the camera only focuses if I push the AF-ON button with my thumb. This takes a bit of getting used to, but when you do you have a lot more control over when the camera does and doesn't try to focus.
• Image quality is RAW uncompressed.
• The Lens is set to VR On, and focus range is full.
• The D3 holds two memory cards. I tell the camera to use these sequentially, so that it fills one, then the other. It's how I make it through long bouts with only 6 cards.

(VR means "vibration reduction," which is Nikon's way of saying the 70-200 lens has motors in it that stabilize the image and reduce hand-shake while shooting. It sounds like voodoo and it is, but it's the kind of voodoo that works brilliantly. This shot was taken hand-held from 40 feet away as Memphis Misfit flew past.)

Misc:

• I used to shoot with a monopod during bouts but don't anymore since I now usually stand in the middle of the track. When you shoot in the middle, you sort of rotate like a lighthouse. (Side note: you can get quite dizzy doing this until you get used to it!) With a monpod I'd get all tripped up. But it might be nice to try using one again someday. It gives lovely steady images.
• I often shoot 1,500 or more images during a night at NSRG. If there's a lot happening this number can very quickly climb over 2,000.
• Images are post-processed using Adobe Lightroom 2.0. Occasionally I open them in Adobe Photoshop too, if there's some special correction to be done. But for the most part Lightroom does a terrific job.

(TTL BL means "Through The Lens - Balanced Lighting." In this mode Nikon cameras & flashes take a quick reading of the scene before them using a pre-flash, and then fire the shutter and add just enough flash to balance the subject with the surroundings. When it works - which it does almost all the time - it looks as if you didn't even use a flash at all.)

A lot of the stuff mentioned here was worked out in the last 12 months, with some innovations coming quite recently (gel-coloring my flash started last November, and using a battery pack on the SB800 for faster shooting just began in February). The fact is, I'm always tinkering with my derby photography setup and wondering how I can improve things.

But frankly I think I've stretched it to the limit as far as small-scale camera improvements goes. Currently when I step onto the track to shoot derby I'm wearing about $9,000 worth of camera equipment, and some of the items - my lens, my camera body - simply have nothing better available. Unless I want to start buying my cameras from NASA, something else has to be done.

One of the alternatives that the NSRG Media Team is likely to be exploring next season is ways to get more light on the track during bouts. Currently the light levels at the MCC are very low for photography, causing all of us to push our cameras to extreme settings to get decent results. With just a bit more light, we could actually back off a little, and get images that are much sharper, have better color, and are less reliant on the camera's flash for lighting. There are some good alternatives available, it turns out. We're currently looking at a variety of small, portable-yet-powerful battery-powered lights which could be set at intervals around the track. Some of these only cost $40-50 each, and yet only six or eight of them would have a pretty big impact. Not just for the photographers, either, but for the general audience as well. With the track brightly lit up like this, NSRG league bouts would take on a brand-new dramatic theatricality that I know the audience would love.

But this is all in the wish stage right now. The Media Team hasn't spoken to the league about this yet. It's just one of several ideas we're tinkering with ... because, of course, we want NSRG photos to be the most rocking images in all of derby. :-)