re: Alabama added color changing LED's around the top of the stadium

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You'd be incorrect.

First, getting a neutral color in the shot is sometimes rather difficult. When you are shooting at 8-10 frames a second in the middle of game action, while pointed on the field... that's just not possible.

Second, the entire point I was making is that the COLOR IS ALWAYS CHANGING. One click correction doesn't always work.

Third, yes, absolutely, you might be processing hundreds of shots. In the old timey days, the editor would give a photographer 10 rolls of film and the command to be back downtown before the end of the third quarter for film processing. Yep, most photographers only got 200-250 shots total for the entire game. Those days are long past. Most sports photographers I know may end up taking 2500-3000 shots during a major college football game including pre/post game activities. Plus, if you are shooting for a service instead of a newspaper, they WANT extra shots because of future sales. So you may well process a LOT of photos over time. I once got a check in the mail for a fan pic I took over six years earlier that ended up in a calendar. You never know.

Fourth, memory cards ARE cheap... but not really fast cards. Those are really expensive. Have you bought a 128GB XQD card lately? Yeah, those are a couple hundred bucks each. They are practically GIVING those away. And smart photographers are using a dual card duplication setup - so you need it paired with an equally fast Compact Flash card of similar size, those are only $125 or so. Thankfully both of my main cameras can utilize an SD as my backup - I can buy a name brand U3 card for about $40. But that CF card is kinda sporty.

Fifth, the problem with RAW+JPG is write speed even with super fast cards. Even great and very capable cameras buffer shots when you are ripping off long action sequences. I'd rather shoot straight JPG and get the shot than be waiting on the camera with RAW and miss the action. Most photographers shoot straight JPG. Some don't but most. And that's what is required by services. Couple in the time required for 'must have' captioning information and RAW simply is not the best choice. Again, not for me. Maybe for you. My main camera is a Nikon D750 with a D800 backup. Not the latest and greatest but still quite capable of the low light sensitivity you need for night games.

Finally, if you are shooting JPG as a conscious decision, then clearly you'd never be using Adobe Camera Raw for processing. I batch process using Lightroom and single process using Photoshop. I use multiple programs for captioning depending on the quantity and speed needed. So your one-click argument is moot. It is always far better to not have to post process for color - it is much easier to post process for cropping, sharpness, vibrancy, levels, etc... but wholesale color shifts are difficult especially when the color shift is for multiple colors over different shots. And keep in mind that since light is directional, you may not even get a consistent color across any single photo.

But hey, I appreciate your advice and trying to make it sound easy.

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First off, I'd like to say that I totally appreciate the difficulty of being a sports photographer, or any photographer for that matter (with the exception of soccer mom photogs that pass themselves off as pros...) With the exception of maybe wildlife photographers, sports photographers have the most difficult economics to deal with in the photography field. They usually have the most expensive bodies and lenses and some of the most difficult shooting situations (fast action in low light). While I haven't truly shot sports photography since 800 speed film (pushed to 1600) was "fast" and my motor drive was blazing at 2.5 frames per second. However, I understand enough about the craft that I feel I can talk somewhat intelligently about it, even if it wasn't my primary genera. When I shooting heavily many years ago, I used to watch a lot of Scott Kelby's seminars on a variety of subjects and feel I learned a lot from him.

Here's one from a few years ago, just to show I'm not a TOTAL scrub (does Rodeo count as sports photography?... )



So, in my own opinion, I think you're sacrificing what's possible for what's easy. Look I've had to process lots and lots of files (hundreds) at one time, so I know where you are coming from. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just drop a bunch of images into lightroom, tweak a few sliders and click batch process and have them come out perfect every time? But sometimes it's not that easy. Would you rather do things fast or correct? FWIW, while it's not commonly done, you can always open JPEG's in ACR. Not optimum, but doable.

If you're taking 2400-3000 shots per game, I'll almost put you in the "spray and pray" crowd. I'm not impugning you per se, but more making a comment about sports photographers in general. I'll state that over shooting is one of my biggest critiques for sports photographers as a group. It's a case of where technology has made us lazy, and not better at our craft. I'll ask you, of those 3000 photos how many "keepers" do you get? One in 10 would be 300 per game. One in 100 would be 30. I'd bet it's closer to the former than the later. So that begs the question, can you cull the herd on the field?

When you do the math, for a 1 hour (playing time) football game, 2K-3K shots is between 2/3's and 7/8 images per second for game action. I realize there are things going on between plays too, but that's a awful lot of shots. Just because our cameras CAN shoot 10+ frames a second, doesn't mean we HAVE to shoot that fast. The problem I have with it is the shutter black out you get when the mirror flips up to expose the sensor. That's the very moment you can get s subject out of frame or move the camera enough to get a poor composition. A good sports photographer once told me, it's often better to wait for the exact pinnacle moment of action to snap the shutter than just firing away like mad. Now, is that easy? No. Is that always possible? No. Does it lead to better photos? Yes.

As for storage, I hear what you are saying, but again, and unfortunately, that's the price of doing business. A memory card that cost a couple of hundred bucks is small potatoes when compared to a 300mm f/2.8. I mentioned it before, but being more selective on the shutter has the added bonus of letting your camera's buffer catch up writing your files, so write speed becomes less on an issue.

If your hesitant to shoot full raw+jpg, then shoot 12bit lossy raw. DO you really need the files at max res anyway? At roughly 45MB per image for the D800, you'll still be able to get almost 3,000 images on a 128GB card. (For the D750 the files are about 60% of the size of the D800, so nearly 5K images on a 128gb card.) Given your own stated images shot per game, that should be enough.

Difficult does not equal impossible. I'll ask this, what's the shot of a lifetime worth? Would you rather have your cameras small on board computer do your processing, or would you like full creative control? I know my answer and it's why I personally ALWAYS shoot RAW+jpg.

Well I've rambled on WAY to long, but I think the point is made. While I understand you're comfortable in your workflow, there are other ways to do things and while they present challenges, they aren't impossible. They saying "There's not such thing as a free lunch" applies here. While I did gloss over a few things in my original reply, they also aren't as difficult as you imply.

The video of them in action is awesome!

LINK

Alabama's is unique among the stadiums that have the Let's, given the linear structure of Bryant-Denny's bank of lights

Adds a unique aspect.