Indoor pool settings?

i12go2wdw

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jul 3, 2001
Messages
539
After lurking on this site for a very long time and weighing all the information from all of you I purchased a Canon S5 on Sunday and am just loving it. I was wondering what setting to use to get some good shot of my daughters swimming at an indoor pool, I had great results at the aquarium using the aquarium setting, would that be the one to use,
Thanks for all your help,
Christine
 
It really all depends on the lighting. Indoor sports really isn't the specialty of the S-series camera (or any P&S for that matter).

I think you generally get the best low-light performance in Av mode, setting the aperture as wide as it will go and letting the camera pick the appropriate shutter speed. You can get the widest possible aperture (2.7) by NOT zooming. When zooming, the widest aperture you can set is 3.5.

You can check what shutter speed the camera will pick by half-pressing the shutter button. 1/60 is really about the slowest you can go and still get a sharp picture of a (very slightly) moving subject. For sports, you'll want to get faster speeds....

If you aren't getting shutter speeds fast enough to freeze the motion of the subjects, try raising the ISO in steps (start at 80 and switch to 100, 200, 400, 800, and then 1600; each step lets in twice as much light at the cost of noise) until you get an acceptable speed. Try to keep it at 400 or below, if possible, for the least amount of noise.

However, if you just can't get a fast enough shutter speed without going to an ISO of 800 or 1600, most of the noise can be lessened or removed with Noiseware/Noise Ninja/Neat Image/etc. It might look pretty bad at 100% on a computer monitor, but on a 4"x6" print it will hardly be noticeable at all.
 
I've shot a lot of indoor swimming and a point and shoot isn't really up to the task. In fact it's hard enough with a pro series dslr and very fast glass. Lighting is notoriously bad at indoor pools. The picture below was taken at 1600ISO, f2.8 and 1/400 sec shutter speed and as you can see there is still a lot of motion blur in the hand.

Good advice on using a noise reduction program. It's a good friend for these high ISO shots.

Dis1.jpg
 
Its not just indoor swimming. Any indoor sports like indoor soccer, gymnastics or basketball are going to have not enough light yet require fast shutter speeds. Not a good combination.

If you have professional gear, you can get some good shots. If you have a P&S, you can get some OK shots if your conditions are excellent and expectation are low.
 


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