the finals of the national open tournament were tonight at lugogo and a good crowd was on hand. i’ve whined enough about my lack of flash knowledge, so i’ll keep that to a minimum. but the top photo is a good teaching point about first- and second-curtain shutter sync.

for longer exposures you can set the flash to fire at the beginning or the end of the time the shutter is open. for sports, second-curtain (the flash fires at the end) tends to be best because you get the blur of motion leading up to the point where the flash stops the motion. the top image is first-curtain sync. here the motion is stopped in red’s wind-up to punch and then you can see the 1/6th second punch that follows, where his ghost is fully extended. i would rather have the motion leading up to the punch and have the flash pop at the point he’s extended.

i set second-curtain in my camera functions, but i guess you have to set it on the external flash. bummer.

all in all, though, i got some fun shots. the 16-35mm is my most versatile lens in this situation and i knew i wanted to get a shot of the boxers with the light above so that’s why i took it. but if i had multiple nights to shoot i would go a few rounds with my 50mm f/1.4 to get a little closer in and blur out the background some.