Shooter41 Loc: Wichita, KS

Recently, I took photographs of outdoor soccer players in sunlight during the late afternoon and later under night lights after the sun went down at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. When I got home and began editing, I noticed that my shot of two players going up for a header surrounded by additional players included players with three different basic skin tones. (Light, medium and dark complected) I had set up my Sony A7R4 camera and 70-200mm, F2.8, Sony telephoto zoom lens to capture the detail in the lightest skin tone. All of my JPEG images lost the details when players were in the shadow of the bleachers. All of my RAW images fared better than JPEG but still struggled to capture the finest details in the darkest skin toned players when they went into shadows. (Some clipping of shadows areas occured.) I welcome any and all suggestions from UHH sports photographers how they set up their cameras to capture the detail of all of the players, no matter how light or dark their skin tone is and whether the players are in sunlight, mercury vapor night lights or shadows. The attached image shows two fair skinned players on the left, a medium skin toned #7 and a dark skin toned player with his back to the camera after I edited the exposure trying to find the sweet spot. Shooter41

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PAR4DCR Loc: A Sunny Place

You might send a PM to Jules Karney. Does a lot of sports shooting for MaxPreps and one of the best on UHH Don.

Don

Shooter41 Loc: Wichita, KS

Dear PAR4DCR... Thanks for the excellent suggestion for me to contact Jules Karney. Shooter41 (Don Marler)

Grahame Loc: Fiji

Whilst I don't photograph game players I regularly photograph race events that have individuals and groups of runners with skin tones ranging from black to white in all different ambient lighting conditions.

I have found the best way to tackle this problem is to push things to the right, being sure not to clip where its important. With modern cameras and shooting raw in these tricky varying light conditions I find there's rarely anything that can not be sorted easily in post. If I'm stood in one position, I'll set the camera (generally manual speed and aperture with auto ISO, matrix metering) using EC to get exp pushed to the right for the 'brightest' direction and leave it to look after itself when aiming in the lower light direction.

Shooter41 Loc: Wichita, KS

Dear Grahame...
Thank you for taking the time to view my post and make an excellent suggestion for me to take full advantage of auto ISO during changing light situations. (Also I have learned to shoot both JPEG and RAW formats so that I can delete the bad images quickly using JPEG and edit the winners using RAW format images which has more latitude to avoid clipping and open up the shadows and avoid clipping highlights by viewing the histogram enabling me to adjust exposure as needed to avoid losing detail. I also use several software editing programs to take advantage of each of their strongest points. (Topaz is great on getting rid of noise.) Love to see some of your work. Shooter41

Jules Karney Loc: Las Vegas, Nevada

Hi
Try to adjust in photoshop or lr.
Auto shadows /highlights should do the trick.