Camera policy in Lynah?

[Andy Dodd]

I've tried to do a bit of searching both on the forums and the Cornell Athletics site but haven't found an answer.  It's probably there somewhere but I just haven't been able to find it yet.  I hold season tickets in the townie sections this year and am thinking of bringing my camera to the playoff games.  I've seen plenty of point-and-shoots in the stands, but not many SLRs.  (There's one person I've seen periodically with an SLR that seems to be a spectator and not there in a professional fashion, but I can't be sure.)

What is the policy on cameras in Lynah?  Obviously flash photography is verboten, but other than that - any other restrictions?  I'm probably bringing a moderate sized lens (Sigma 18-250mm, as it's my longest optically stabilized lens, and my Sigma 50-500 is simply WAY too big to bring to a game and too slow to use that reach indoors anyway...)

Also, this is not professional work - photography is just a (very expensive) hobby for me.  However, in many places, security personnel are notorious for assuming "SLR = professional".

[CowbellGuy]

I've shot with everything from a 10.5mm fisheye to a 300 2.8. Bring whatever you like, it's no problem.

[Andy Dodd]

Thanks!

(300mm/2.8...  I'm jealous!)

Maybe next season I'll try the Bigma at a game, but that lens requires a LOT of practice and upper body strength and I'm out of shape.  

[Rosey]

Does anyone have a link to that picture of Age and his 300mm lens?  I can't seem to find it, but it's apropos for this thread. :-)

[billhoward]

NCAA is death on pro type cameras coming in to NCAA events. First two guards at Gillette Stadium last fall saw the 400mm lens in my sling bag and were about to speed dial Homeland Security. The third I BS'd about the weather and how much I missed living in the Bay State and she waved me in.

Don't give Cornell ideas.

If Cornell really loved photographers, they'd cut holes in the plexi so you could shoot through. (Some rinks have cover plates for when they aren't being used.) Age spends four grand for a good lens and the glass kills the lens quality.  

Outdoors, you can no longer shoot on the field proper. In the Richie Moran era, it was, 'C'mon down.'

[KeithK]

If Cornell really loved photographers, they'd cut holes in the plexi so you could shoot through. (Some rinks have cover plates for when they aren't being used.) Age spends four grand for a good lens and the glass kills the lens quality.  

Not to mention the absurd lighting. (Or have they fixed that?)

[billhoward]

Two things I recall from Lynah: While the lumens are up from the Harkness / Bertrand era, there still seem to be hotspots, and the lowest-bidder-won lamps appear to be the kind that color shift 60 times a second, so if you bring in a gray card or Expodisc color balancing filter, it's only good that 1/60 second. Best in the CAC is Quinnipiac, which has awesome lighting (sidelit not top lit), at least a stop brighter and maybe two, and still either the Q photographer or the New Haven photographer was using Dynalites or Speedotron multiple strobes (flash duration shorter than 1/2000 second, usually you shoot at f/5.6 or f/8) for better photos still. (I haven't shot at Lynah this year so my info may be dated.)

You want to see how Sports Illustrated shoots NCAA sports, they send in a team a week in advance and wire something like a half dozen strobes in each of the four corners of the arena. http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/articles/finalfour.aspx

By the way, the people who tell you "equipment doesn't matter," that's BS. A lousy photographer will still take lousy photos with an expensive lens and camera, but a decent photog with a 300mm f/2.8 shooting at 6 frames per second, it's hard to mess up.

If you've got an open-minded girlfriend or wife, put the Nikon or Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 on your birthday / Christmas wishlist. It won't reach the far side of the field, but for candids of your cute terrier, or your brother's kids playing on the swing -- priceless. That's the first big bucks lens to aim for.

[Andy Dodd]

My observations:

Not a single hassle from any usher/security person.  Odd, I thought I'd at least get frisked for fish like I did at the last home Harvard game!  This may not apply at other venues of course, but Lynah seems fine as others stated.
The team uniforms are clearly treated with one of those whiteners that fluoresce.  Do NOT use Scrivens' uniform as a white balance reference like I did!  The uniforms will look great but everything else will be wacky
I didn't have problems with color shifts - shooting at 1/125 most of the game, color seems consistent from shot to shot.
The ice seems to make an OK WB reference, but a proper white reference on-ice would be nice...  An Expodisc is probably going to get thrown off by the fluorescents that cover the stands.  If you take a WB ref off of uniforms, the ice looks awful.  If you ref off the ice, the uniforms still look OK.  I'm glad that I always shoot in a raw format so I can post-correct white balance issues.
I need a faster lens (see above shutter speed comment).  My body is a Pentax so while there is Tamron and Sigma 70-200/2.8 glass available, Sigma just announced one with optical stabilization added to it.  While the Pentax bodies have sensor-shift stabilization, having it in the lens helps AF.  Shooting at f/6.3 sucked.  Lots of lost shots due to blur.
Shooting through the glass from a seat really sucks - some of the panels are rather scuffed up so the camera AFs on them instead of the action.  The seams are annoying as hell.
As bad as the glass is for image quality, referees are worse...

[CowbellGuy]

The white balance problem is a moving target. There's no "correct" WB. As mentioned earlier in this thread, the lights actually phase between blue and red at somewhere around 60 Hz. If you camera has a live view or you have a pocket point-and-shoot, just take a wide angle look at the ice, but not if you're prone to epileptic fits. IT's visible at anything faster than around 1/100 and moreso the faster you shoot. What's worse is each light seems to be completely out-of-phase with the one next to it, so you're always going to be dealing with not just one, but both color casts in almost every shot. It's taken me, I dunno, 6 years(?) to come up with a workable postprocessing solution, which I'm not particularly apt to share, and is software-dependent, but it's a pain in the ass. Correct white point is somewhere around 5000K +/- 100. Set that and do what you can to fix the color casts. Or don't bother. A lot of published photographers just don't bother, but that speaks more to certain publications' journalistic and photographic standards than proper practice.

[Andy Dodd]

Hmm...  For some reason my post appeared as a gigantic text block.  

In a few of my wide angle shots I do see a bit of a light-to-light variance, but things do seem relatively constant from shot-to-shot even at 1/125-1/160.  It's not perfect though...

[billhoward]

Just punt and set it to auto white balance. Photos you can enjoy that night or overnight are a lot more interesting, IMO, than perfect images a week later. Actually, there's room for both. That's also why a lot of arena photogaphers just bring their own strobes and overpower the rink lighting; they use strobes with very short flash durations that aren't as noticeable and that also don't annoy the NCAA, which actually sets rules on who can use flash at a tournament

I'm going to ask Mike or Andy to add neutral gray as a trim color in the Cornell sports color palette and make it a patch on the sides of each helmet big enough to grab with the Photoshop eyedropper. As you know or found out, the ice and jerseys look pure white to our eyes but not even close as far as the camera is concerned.

[CowbellGuy]

That's about the worst thing you can do, since the white balance can change completely from shot to shot depending at where in the phasing the light that happens to be most prominent in your shot is. Whether you want stuff that night or next year, do what I said and set your white point to around 5000K. And neutral grey's won't make a damned bit of difference since it's always changing. If you set it on a neutral grey it will be based on whatever the light is doing at that instant.

[Jordan 04]

Get a room, you guys!

[RichH]

Get a room, you guys!

They did. It's called the "Camera policy in Lynah?" topic.

[Larry72]

OK gentlemen - you are both correct.   Age, if you want to start with a consistent image to post process, you're right.  That's if you're trying to get the same color renditions every time.  Bill, if you don't care about getting the exact same color every time, using auto white balance will get you close.  The camera will adjust (kind of, but it's not perfect).  I've tried both techniques and in the end there's work to be done either way.

I chuckle over all of this.  "Back in the day",(think 60s and early 70s) the lighting was truly poor.  There were "circles" of brighter light directly under the old (2 generations ago, I think) lights, about 20ft in diameter. At best we shot f2.8 @ 500th with Tri-X pushed to ISO (ASA) 1600+ that gave us a pretty grainy B/W image, but we printed it anyway. The few times I shot color, it was really tough.  Ectachrome 400 shot at 800 was barely acceptable and there wasn't a good way to correct the color.  Going to the old Boston Garden was a real treat!  Almost a full stop more light and holes in the glass in all the corners.  The local photographers didn't have to worry about that.  They could use the Garden's strobes...really powerful which were up in the rafters.   I never liked those images (lots of funny shadows), but it stopped the action!

At Lynah, we shot through the "green" glass behind the goals and in the corner.  Also from ladders above the glass and from the penalty box. I don't recall even thinking about wearing a helmet.  (Of course, the players didn't wear facemasks either.)  

Larry