Vogler's Bag O' light

I've had some people ask me how I've gone about strobing high school gyms for basketball and wrestling so I thought I'd show and explain what I've been doing. I'm using two Nikon SB-28 speedlights mounted to impact umbrella stands that I attach to whatever convenient place I can find (usually the railing of the bleachers) using a Manfroto Superclamp. I mount on on each side of the gym and fire them using Pocketwizards. I've found that the higher I'm able to get them the better the results. The speedlights are set to 1/2 power and I'm usually able to get 2-3 stops above the ambient to help prevent motion blur. I always shoot at 1/250, 2.8 and adjust the ISO to achieve the proper exposure using the histogram on the back of my camera. I sit on the right side of the baseline as far back as I can get. I prefer to shoot from the inside, just to the right of the free throw lane. I almost always use my 70-200 but I have been experimenting with shooting some wide angle stuff using the 16-35. The entire set-up fits in my Domke sholder bag or more recently in the  sling bag my Mother gave me for Christmas which contains the bulk of my speedlight lighting kit.

I flagrantly stole the set up from David Hobby here and here.


Here are some examples of some recent work shot using this set up. The Truman and William Chrisman shots were done with the lights significantly lower that the photos of Blue Springs South and Blue Springs which as you can see makes a big difference in the shadows. The gyms that shot Blue springs and South at are also significantly brighter.