indoor action shots

[goofymom/pop]

Well gang this weekend my son has an indoor baseball game and I want to photograph it. Last time the color was orangish and they were a little blurry. Any tips? Do I have to tripod it? What settings should I be in for optimum shots?

Help....

 

[Goofyish]

In low light when you are trying to catch fast moving action you need the fastest shutter speed available. In order to get the fastest shutter speed in low light you will need a faster (more sensitive) film - at least 400 or even better 800 ISO. (on a digital camera you can increase the ISO rating, which increases the sensitivity of the sensor). The downside of using a high ISO is there will be an increase in grain/noise. Latest films/digital cameras are much better then they were in the past at controlling grain/noise.
Using a tripod would help for non-action shots indoors, but would restrict your ability to follow the action.

The colour cast is caused by artificial lights. Tungsten type lights will give an orange cast, while flourescent lights will give a greeny cast. You can get filters that will compensate, or on a digital you can adjust the white balance settings, or adjust the colour in photo editing software.

 

[xder345]

It really depends on the camera that you have. I'll try to be general. (I'm assuming that you're using digital)

The orange cast is caused my an incorrect white balance. You should read the camera's manual and set the white balance in the stadium in the actual lighting conditions. If you can't set a custom white balance, pick one of the presets. Probably light bulb (incandescent) would be the best. Obviously, this refers to digital only.
As far as bluriness, try to up the ISO as much as possible (or use fast film). Wide apertures, and fast shutter speeds are your friends for indoor anything. A tripod won't be of much use (in all likelihood) because you want to follow the action.

 

[goofymom/pop]

I am happy because I actually understood all that. I will up my ISO to 1600 and set the WB and try several WB settings to see if that helps. I will let you know how it goes

 

[Brisully]

Cindy, another thing to make sure to do is to use the highest shutter speed that you can so that you can stop the action. 1/500 of a second will stop most action, but if you are inside there may not be enough light to shoot that fast.

 

[AZ JazzyJ]

Cindy, another thing to make sure to do is to use the highest shutter speed that you can so that you can stop the action. 1/500 of a second will stop most action, but if you are inside there may not be enough light to shoot that fast.

Ok Brian I am going to put you on the spot. I know you shoot a lot of indoor sports especially hockey. Since a lot of arenas are not well lit (unless you're shooting the Black Hawks) so what lens ISO combination do you use? I've read a lot that says you should use shorter distance lenses in lower light (even using the aperture such as f2.8) to increase the depth of field and increasing the focusing sweet spot. I'm curious about hearing your experience with this.

Jeff

 

[MICKEY88]

Ok Brian I am going to put you on the spot. I know you shoot a lot of indoor sports especially hockey. Since a lot of arenas are not well lit (unless you're shooting the Black Hawks) so what lens ISO combination do you use? I've read a lot that says you should use shorter distance lenses in lower light (even using the aperture such as f2.8) to increase the depth of field and increasing the focusing sweet spot. I'm curious about hearing your experience with this.

Jeff

using shorter distance lenses usually gives you a faster lens, due to a larger aperture, however the larger aperture such as the f2.8 that you mention, reduces depth of field, to increase depth of field you would want to stop down the lens to f8, f11,f16 etc...but then you lose light and require a slower shutter speed

 

[amid chaos]

I have been experimenting with manual vs auto for ice hockey shots. There are alot of things going against the possibility of a good shot in an ice rink. Between the moving targets (LOL), flouresant lights, lots of white ice and shooting through sometimes dirty and scratched plexiglass or netting, shots can be difficult to say the least.
Today I will be shoooting in "RAW" and editing later.

If anyone has any tricks to shooting in this type of arena, I'd appreciate hearing them.

 

[Brisully]

With hockey season in full swing now, we are beginning to shoot action shots again. Since we have a professional company, we have some higher quality lenses ten I would have personally. Our main lens for shooting action shots is a Canon L 70-200 IS lens (the IS is for Image Stabilization).

When we get to a rink, we always set thw White Balance manually, so that we won't have a color shift from picture to picture.

We always shoot at the lowest possible aperature, so that we can seperate the player (in focus) from the rest of the image (soft focus). This is more appealing to the parents, and tends to produce a more dramatic photo.

The more experienced shooters of our company shoot in Manual metering mode. Generally, we will use the spot meter of the camera to evaluate the light in the rink, and set our exposure in the middle of the range. The less experienced shoot in Aperature mode, where we set the aperature to the lowest setting, (in this case 2.8), and let the camera select the time.

We also try to shoot at 1/500 or faster. That will freeze most any action. To achieve this, we may have to increase out ISO settings to the top range, 800 or 1600, but we try to keep the ISO as low as we can, as long as we can shoot at 1/500 or faster. This will limit the amount of noise in the image.

As for focusing - when we shoot action, we will always use AI Focus (Canon cameras - Not sure what Nikon's term is for that). This will keep focusing up to the point that the shutter is pressed.

I hope I haven't given you too much information here. I am sure that TheLionKing (Dave) could also share some of his techniques. If you haven't seen his body of work, click the link in his signature. There's some really good stuff in there.

Here's a few examples of some of my work. DIS Gallery

 

[amid chaos]

Brian!! Thank you for sharing your expertise! Lots of helpful information there. I will experiment more next week. Love the picture you took of that goalie!!!

 

[goofymom/pop]

Oh My.....my head is swimming.....holy cow.....I think I need a valium after all that information. LOL!!!

I am printing this out so I can take the important stuff with me to the game on friday (this week was practice and not worth shooting)....good heavens I feel like I need to learn a foreign language.