indoor sports

Hi,

 

I am new to photography...I have a Canon Rebel XT and have loved it...mostly

doing portraits, stills, that kind of stuff. All in auto-focus. I have now

been asked by our small school to take pics of our students athletics.

volleyball and basketball. I took pictures for the first time last night and

the pictures turned out terrible. HELP. I am using a Canon EFS 17-85mm lens.

The pictures were dark at 400, so I moved it to 800, still dark, so I moved the

iso to 1600 and it was better but still a lot of noise and blur. Any

suggestions would be helpful. I am looking at the Canon 85mm f 1.8 lens. Good

idea?

 

Thank you in advance for any suggestions and help.

 

Blessings...

Good route with a f1.8 lens, kill the on-board flash, you should be fine with ISO-800 or even ISO-1600 with the XT. Make sure you have at least 1/320 sec. shutter speed in which you'll most likely be shooting at wide open, or close to f1.8. Try to get physically closer to action and look for a clean background (the shallower d.o.f. of f1.8 will help with this.)

I've shot figure skating and dancing and found similar problems even with f/2.8 apertures. You have to go up ISO 800, underexpose up to two stops with RAW, and then push-process those missing stops when converting from RAW to JPG. It would be great to have a lense of f/2 or even f/1.4. If you use f/4-5.6 you are doomed to fail.<p>

Good lenses for indoor sports are:<br>

- EF 50/1.4 and EF 50/1.8<br>

- EF85/1.8<br>

- EF100/2<br>

- EF135/2L<br>

- EF 70-200/2.8 L IS<p>

In essence fast lenses: large aperture and (ring)USM focus motor.

When shooting sports should I keep it on the auto-focus or use another mode? I think I need a good learning book? Any suggestions here as well? LOL

Looks like you're shooting volleyball, so I'd say stay with auto-focus. If your camera has the option of continuous servo (AF-C) then set it so (as in oppose to single servo / AF-S.)

 

Additionally, you should be able to select between "release priority" (allows you to fire regardless if focus is sharp or not) and "focus priority" (camera only fires when subject is in focus.) I personally stick with release priority, but you should they them both to see which works best for you.

Laura, personally, in my opinion, volleyball is the most difficult sport to shoot. Again, my opinion. There is a lot going on in your photo that needs to be addressed.

 

First, you are too far away. Move closer or use a longer zoom. I like to shoot volleyball from 4 places. My usual starting place, and the location I like to spend most of my time is on the end line. About 10 to 15 feet back with a fast, long zoom, like a 70-200 2.8 or a 300 2.8. I will lay flat on my stomach. This way, shooting digs on the opposite side is easier, those players are facing you, and you can get good block shots, and some spikes. The next two locations I like are on either side of the net as close to the net as possible. On the net side of the team I am shooting, I can get different angles of digs, sets and various shots. On the otherside, shooting through the net, blocks and spikes are my goal. The 4th place I like to shoot, and it is not always available in all gyms, is above the action. A balcony or a upper track circling the gym is great. Shooting down onto the action is much better for clean backgrounds and since the players are usually looking up at the ball, they are looking more in your direction. So, shooting from one of these four areas is key.

 

Second, shutter speed. Unlike what was previously posted, you need at the minimum 1/400th if not 1/500th shutter speeds to freeze the action. Anything less and you will get into motion blur from the players. So, bump that ISO up. If you have to shoot 1600 to get the exposure you need, then shoot at 1600. However, I highly recommend NOT underexposing the shots and recovering them in a RAW conversion later. RAW is not a save all format and unless you are converting the files into 16bit tiffs and adobe RGB or ProPhotoRGB, All RAW will do is slow you down. If you shoot at 1600 and underexpose by two stops, when you convert and fix the exposure in the RAW conversion, your images will be full of digital noise and artifacts. Much worse looking than a correctly exposed 1600ISO. What Juha Kivek䳠ment was that if your camera is telling you to shoot 1/160th at 5.6, go ahead and shoot at 1/320th at 5.6 and adjust your exposure in RAW. One of the problems is that that will not give you correct exposure at all, and as you adjust the image, you will start to see a lot of noise. Honestly, if you can not get the exposure you absolutly need to capture the action, you will not be happy with your results trying to save it later in RAW. If I am in a gym and I can not get the exposure I need, I will go the opposite way with volleyball. I will slow down my shutter speed to 1/60th and do some panning shots. Panning with a girl jumping for a block or swooping in for a spike looks pretty cool, but it takes a lot of practice.

 

Third, stay away from flash. It does not matter what level you are shooting, but when it comes to on camera flash, volleyball officials or coaches will usually not be to happy with you. When a team is loosing, many times the coach will blame the person using flash. On camera flash also will cast bad shadows and create red eye, which you have. On the other hand, using strobes mounted high above the court is a great, but very expensive option.

 

Finally, set a custom wb. You will be amazed at how much cleaner your photos will look when correctly exposed and with a correct WB.

 

Your cheapest option is to pick up a 50mm 1.8. On your camera, this will e close to a 85mm lens, and shooting close to the action, like my suggestion for my 2nd and 3rd spots it will work fine. Also, focusing can be an issue. When shooting through the net, you will usually grab focus on the net instead of the players. Pre focusing and waiting for the action to enter you zone of focus is the best way to do it in volleyball. Other great volleyball lenses are the 85 1.8, 135 2.0 and the extremely expensive 200 1.8. With enough light, a 70-200 2.8, 200 2.8, 300 2.8 or 120-300 2.8 are great volleyball lenses.

 

I shot a game last night, first for me this season, and it took me a little while to get into my groove, but here are a couple shots from it. These were with a 1D, 85 1.8 shot at 1600 ISO and run through Noise Ninja. The first one is my least favorite, but all the girls on the team really liked it, and the second is the one I really like.<div></div>

and the second shot....more of a traditional shot<div></div>

oh, here is one more....<div></div>

Great insights on shooting location by Carl and indeed custom white balance should be set to avoid strange color cast. Although faster speed is definitely preferable (1/400 and above) to freeze action, but if need be, 1/320 can still be the minimum with side effect of hand blurs which can be benefitial to convey motion.<div></div>

Another at 1/320.<div></div>

Well you certainly picked a hard one with volleyball! I've shot volleyball with my 300D and cheap super zoom for a few years now and never got anything very good. This year I got a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 and had a dramatic improvement, I just got a 30D last week which will hopefully improve things again!

 

Basically there has been a lot of good advice already so I just thougth I'd add my favourite shooting location. I like to shoot from about, or even a bit above, the height of the net (so higher for guys) on the side lines. If I am shooting passing then I will be more or less level with the net looking toward the back of the court, if I am shooting blocking and spiking then I will move closer to the back of the court. The advantage of being higher is that players won't get in the way as much, you can see over a player that is close to you if the action is behind them. If you are much higher then you will also be able to see more of the spiker/blocker that is on the other side of the net without the net in front of them. As well as cleaner background and often better light (lights are above them, so are you - just figured that one out last week).

 

Hope that helps.

Carl Auer, consider these:<p>

a)<br>

When ISO is increased it is effectively turning the ampification factor up. The signal amplitude gets smaller and smaller, but the noise stays constant and S/N-ratio decreases and thus there is more noise in the outcome.<p>

b)<br>

RAW-file has the resolution of 12 bits i.e. 4096 values of intensity on each of the three channels. JPG has 8 bits = 256 intensity values. Now, you underexpose RAW say one stop at ISO 800. So you have the signal in 12 bits and with the S/N-ratio of ISO800. Then you compress the top end and stretch the low end so that basically you push-process that stop back. Smplification: you only use the 256 lowest values of the 4096. You scale "laterally" instead of "vertically". The difference is that when using the cameras amplification circuitry the S/N-ratio decreases progressively after a point. When doing it mathematically in RAW->JPG you can control it more linearly. I have tested this and compared and the conclusion is clear: RAW push-process, when done correctly, produces SIGNIFICANTLY less noise than shooting originally with higher sensitivity when ISO is set above 800.<p>

If you shoot JPG in low light condition, you are also bound to have dynamics range problems immediately when you tune the file in the Photoshop. The latitude of RAW is huge compared over JPG. Of course 16 bit TIFF has even more latitude than RAW, but, you can't increase information when converting 12 bits into 16 bits. What it does is that it gives you is more latitude onec tuning in Photoshop or similar. I urge you to test RAW and push-process and prove me wrong. You'll be surprised that you have more control over the noise. And then, there is of course the NoiseNinjas etc.

Hi,

 

Thank ya'll so much, I am learning so much. For our home games I can get above the action by going into the balcony. Can you suggest a good lens as I will quite a distance from them.

Hi Laura,

 

Just one more thing. If your pictures are too dark and you're not getting an exposure warning, you may not be metering correctly. Maybe you're shooting up into the ceiling lights or light walls? The good thing about indoor shooting is consistent lighting. You might try finding a middle gray subject to determine exposure (or use a gray card), and then set your exposure manually.

 

John

Juha, I have been shooting for 18 years and digital since 1997. I have found is that when you underexpose in RAW and fix it later in your conversion, you introduce unacceptable noise in shadow areas. I say unacceptable because I shoot for 2 major wire services who deal with large publications that demand clean photos on a daily basis. While shooting at a higher ISO may introduce more noise, it does not introduce the noise to the levels of underexposing a raw image. If it works for you, great, go for it, but in the majority of the shoots I do, exposure has got to me nailed in camera and files that have been pushed 2 stops in processing would not be accepted.

 

Also, Laura is obviously new to this and should not even be thinking about using RAW yet. You make RAW sound like a save all and it is not. It may have more data, but in the end you still save your shots for printing or for the web in jpg and all that extra data that you had in RAW is now gone. Yes, the dynamic range of RAW is nice, but it should not be used as a crutch to save an entire image. That is the wrong mentality of a photographer. If I go out and shoot a high school football game and it is too dark to get the shutter speeds I need, I am not going to underexpose in RAW, shoot 300 photos, and then run a batch RAW exposure correction on the 300 photos so I can see what is salvageable. It is a waste of time and memory. If all my shots are underexposed and your histogram is all the way to the left with nothing at the right in the white area, that means your shadow detail is gone. Period. No amount of RAW conversion is going to save the detail in that area and that is where colors start to go wrong and noise appears. But as I said, if it works for you, go for it.

 

Laura, shooting from the balcony, a 70-200 2.8 or a 200 2.8 should be all you need. If you have access to or could rent a 300 2.8 that would be even better.

Carl, we don't agree here. You have to understand that jpg is actually just a window to the RAW dynamics and you can decide to where you are going to install it. It's called latitude. Basically this is just mathematics and it never lies. You can easily adjust RAW file with two stops and have a perfect print media acceptable file. The bottleneck eventually is always the print technology.<p>

You do it your way, I do it mine, Laura shall do her way. Over and out.<p>

ps. By the way, I've shot for hmmm...27 years so the smoke screen didn't work.

<blockquote>

a) When ISO is increased it is effectively turning the ampification factor up. The signal amplitude gets smaller and smaller, but the noise stays constant and S/N-ratio decreases and thus there is more noise in the outcome.

</blockquote>

Since the signal is simply the light hitting the sensor, it varies only with aperture and shutter speed, not ISO sensitivity. The values in a RAW file are essentially (signal+inherent noise)*(amplifier gain)+(amplifier and analog-to-digital conversion noise). For ISO 1600, the amplifier gain is twice the gain for ISO 800. Pulling the RAW data 1 stop in software is just multiplying the final values by 2, which also multiplies the amplifier and ADC noise term by 2 and thus is slightly worse than just using ISO 1600. Hypothetically, if the amplifier noise were far worse at the ISO 1600 setting than at ISO 800, then it would be advantageous to do the scaling after the ADC. However, in that case, the camera manufacturer would be stupid not to just do that internally when the camera was set to ISO 1600. Since the manufacturers are not stupid, you can safely just set ISO 1600, shoot RAW, and know that it will be at least as good as pulling an ISO 800 RAW file an extra stop.

 

<blockquote>

b)

RAW-file has the resolution of 12 bits i.e. 4096 values of intensity on each of the three channels. JPG has 8 bits = 256 intensity values.

</blockquote>

RAW values represent the linear sensor response, i.e., they're basically a count of the number of photons that hit the sensor. JPEG values are the result of a nonlinear transformation which is matched to the response of the human eye. They are not directly comparable.

 

Yes, you can pull or push RAW slightly more than you can a JPEG, but it is hardly magic. And for a severely underexposed shot, there's probably not a whole lot of difference in the result since the information that JPEG discards is mostly in the highlight range.

David said it best....and in a nut shell. what the camera does when you set a higher ISO is more than what the user does setting a lower ISO, underexposing, and fixing the exposure in RAW conversion.

 

And there was no smoke screen, I merely stated how long I have been shooting and that I work for wire services to illustrate the point that I use the camera on a daily basis and I know what works for me and what I would not try. Back when I shot film, shooting in high school gyms I was constantly pushing tmax p3200 film to 6400 and getting great results. If only digital sensors could figure out how to do this, I would be in heaven. I do not disagree that RAW has a wider attitude, but in my opinion it should not viewed as something that you can use to "fix it later". I do shoot RAW when I need it, but even then, I will work at them in 16 bit mode and Adobe RGB. I almost never will convert my RAW's into jpgs. Laura, who from reading her original post, is relatively new to the digital world, and I would not recommend anyone new to digital to jump right into shooting RAW for any reason.

Well, I found a site that rents lenses so I rented a 200 2.8 and will post some pictures after the next game and get ya'lls thoughts. I am going to set the ISO for 1600 and see how they turn out. I appreciate everyones comments and am learning so much. Blessings...

Don't feel too discouraged laura, that environment is extremely difficult to shoot in. The

lighting in that gym looks awful. Its very hard to get good action shots in those

conditions.

 

You've been given lots of great suggestions about volleyball, but for basketball I just

wanted to mention a few things.

 

1) Try and get behind the basket if you can. Up against the wall or in the lower bleachers

should be fine. Get some angle between the basket, like 10 feet to the left or right of it.

2) That 85f1.8 or a 100 f2 are definitely your best bet here.

3) As far as focus goes to avoid focusing on the crowd by mistake, you can manual focus

on the hoop, or maybe a little closer or further, and your shots should be about the right

focus. Thats just another trick to shooting basketball that sometimes helps.

 

Good luck.

Hi Everyone,

 

Just wanted to let you know that I appreciate all the time ya'll have taken to "teach me", you have been extremely helpful. Now I will try to put it to work. I'll post some pics when my lens comes in and see what ya'll think. Thanks for the tips on basketball, I'll be photographing that next month. Blessings...

I am also new to both SLR digital photography and photographing indoor volleyball. I just bought the Sony Alpha 100 and would love recommendations on an indoor sports lens to purchase. (Minolta lenses fit the Sony) From reading a few things on the web, it sounds like I need a 2.8 or faster lens. In reading reviews of the Sony Alpha 100, one of the camera's limitations is using the high ISO's as they result in noisy images. Given that, what should I be considering in the purchase of an indoor sports lens? Also, what is the price range I can expect for one? Thanks so much. Cindy