Thanks all for the input!!! I have decided to go with a fast 135mm. This will get the camera about 50ft down the lane (lane is 60ft long) keeping it out of the bowlers line of site. I have decided that I can't get enough OOF to conceal whats in the background without moving the equipment way to close to the subject.
On the second photo I used a speed light mounted to the camera just for test purposes (testing lens focal length)
I have started experimenting with soft boxes placed on each side of the bowler with honeycomb grids. This is helping with the background clutter.
Originally posted by dlh When I saw the first picture, my first thought was, "50mm, f/1.4, wide open, no question." Two reasons: first, to narrow the depth of field, second, to be able to use a faster shutter speed without the harsh effects of a flash (the second picture's pretty bad in that respect). The ISO isn't going to matter much, since the bowler is close enough that you're not going to have that much noise, anyway (considered in terms of the ratio of the quantity of noisy pixels to the valid ones in the important part of the picture). So to me, I'd use that lens, set the ISO to, say, 800 to 1600 (depending on the slowest shutter speed you can live with and still stop the motion), turn off the flash, set the aperture wide open, and then adjust the shutter speed to the fastest possible with an eye on the exposure meter. You can always dial the ISO up or down as needed once you've established a baseline exposure value.
The ambient lighting in bowling centers make it impossible to get a photo that will freeze the action without using flash. At the release point of some bowlers there ball will be traveling 30+mph and the arm would be every bit as fast. (Note in the first photo WITH flash there was still motion blur on the subjects hand)
I will post more photos when I get it dialled in a little more.
Thanks
Photobill
Last edited by Photobill; 03-18-2019 at 11:10 PM.