The Fallston gym, like most in Harford County, has very little room, and no balcony at the end of court which prevents getting our lights high and pointed parallel to the sidelines. We had to place the lights on the sides, which create too much crosslighting and harsh shadows.

When using strobes/flashes, ideally you want to over power the ambient light by 3 to 4 stops so that when you are shooting at your camera’s sync speed (typically 1/250 sec), the quick burst of light from the strobes is what freezes the action and not the shutter speed. I tried bouncing my 580EXs off the back wall to create a large light source, but my flashes, even on full power, could only muster about 2 stops over ambient. In a darker lit gym, this method would probably work, but Fallston’s ambient lighting is better than average.

I had to stick with direct light from the corners of the gym. I placed my flashes on my 7-foot light stands and set them each to 1/8 power, 28mm zoom and aimed them towards the top of the key.

Here are some samples from the night.

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I was quite pleased with the way this turned out. By looking at the image itself, you would think it was taken on a basketball court floor, rather than in my basement.

Below shows how the shot was setup: