Thursday 4 November 2010

Beyond the Lens - A Game of Snooker

Written by Tamara Kwan of TammyLynn Photography


The other night I went out with my husband and the guys from his office for a few games of snooker and a curry. Taking photos inside at night anywhere is challenging, but most especially in a snooker club. It’s also quite difficult to take photos while playing in a tournament as we were, but of course I had to give it a try.

My advice to anyone taking on this sort of challenge would be to use a monopod to help steady the camera, bump up your ISO as high as you dare, use your largest aperture and have some fun. Why not a tripod you might ask, well they aren’t practical in situations like this and most likely would not be allowed as they are a tripping hazard. You might also ask why not use flash. Flash would disrupt the game and take away the atmosphere of the place. Someone concentrating on a shot wouldn’t appreciate the temporary blindness caused by a sudden flash in a dark room.

I took the above photo using only the light in the room, hand held, (wish I’d had a monopod). I’d set my White Balance to auto, but in hindsight I wish I’d set it to Tungsten. As I shot in RAW I was able to change this later in post processing. ISO turned up to 3200, 1/250th of a second exposure with an aperture of f2.8. Post processed in photoshop, cleaned up a bit of noise, tweaked curves, slight sharpen with a high pass filter.

In case you are wondering, that is not my husband pictured above. He is in the picture though, far right holding a snooker cue watching his colleague line up his shot.

PS...
I came in 5th in the MRG Snooker Tournament! :-D  OK, there were only 6 people in the tournament. OK OK so it was a tie for 5th. :-p 

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