Now up...

Rockbusters Wrestlers 2009, both the wrestler and the team photos..

These came out pretty well, all things considered, that being that they're shot under duress.

Duress being that the coaches want to get this over with as quickly as possible, that I'm working in a small space with 50+ 6- to 11-year-old wrestlers, that there's only enough room for one strobe, and that the floors and lower walls are dark green or a kind of yellow-gold, while the upper walls and the ceilings are yellow-gold (see the Team photos to see what I mean) and the existing lighting are fluorescents that are about nine feet overhead.

Shot with my new EOS 5D Mark II; ISO 200; white balance 5600K to match the single Alien Bees AB800 strobe that was fired into a 60" softbox mounted on a light stand at about chest height; manual exposure at a 60th at f8.0; the strobe is just off my right shoulder and about 10 feet from the subjects for the wrestler shots, and dead-center and back about 18-20 feet for the team shots.

For the wrestler shots the softbox was turned to portrait; for the team shots the softbox was rotated over to landscape and aimed somewhat up at the ceiling.

Just shot...

...Rockbusters Wrestlers with the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II body, and my 24-70mm f2.8L zoom lens.

I'll be looking at the photos in detail tomorrow, but the preview on the Mk II's wider 3.0"/920,000 pixel lcd screen is stunning, to say the least.

The histogram is in color (and can show RGB levels, as well as luminance) and is bright, sharp and clear. Menu-selectable options add display of blown-out highlights, as well as whether the histogram initially shows luminance or RGB levels.

I was using the 5D Mk II with a PocketWizard II Plus wireless transmitter to a second PocketWizard firing a single Alien Bee AB800, which fired into a 60" softbox mounted about chest high on a single light stand.

The single 60" softbox was off my right shoulder, turned to portrait and about 10 feet from the subject, and gave a reasonable amount of relatively soft, well-place light, certainly a big step over on-camera flash (which sucks) but not as good as being able to use two softboxes would have been.

Which would have been impossible: space is a little limited in the wrestling room at the High School to say the least, not to mention that there's roughly 50 little wresters running around at full speed doing warm-ups before their evening's practice, and that I needed to occupy as little of the very tight space as I could.

To do the team shots, I moved the AB800 and the 60" soft box back about 18-20 feet from one wall, turned the softbox itself to landscape and aimed it slightly up at the ceiling, shot from just under its lower left corner, and lit the entire team pretty sucessfully.

We'll see more tomorrow...