Sports shots from new camera

[ccarlson]

Here are a couple pics from my new camera (lens help thread). I appreciate the advice on the set up. I ended up with a Nikon D7000 and the lens I'm shooting sports with is the 80-200 f2.8. I'm shooting in shutter priority and pushing iso's in the 3200-6400 range to be able to get 1/500. Any advice on settings to try would be appreciated.

The first shot is my oldest daughter driving to the basket.

This shot is my youngest daughter. I've caught a couple of good impact or hand in the face type shots like this which the kids love to see.

This is the next shot in the series shooting in high speed continuous

Looking forward to doing some more outdoor shots as well as my girls showing horses this spring.

Thanks again for the help and any advice on settings for these type shots. I wasn't real sure on how to make the files smaller so hopefully they didn't lose too much clarity.

ccarlson

[Dbl]

Your shots are looking good. Hard to believe these cameras are shooting this clean at these ISO's! Just a few years ago anything that could approach ISO 6400 did not look good!

My only suggestion and it is just that, is that you may find more consistency in your shots if you shoot in manual as opposed to shutter priority. In fact the only time I use shutter priority is if I am trying to pan or provide prop blur on airplane shots!

The backgrounds you see in gyms along with uniform colors, white and black for instance can give your meter fits trying to determine the correct exposure. Once you see what will give you proper exposure of the player and specifically the face just set that in and take the metering decisions from the camera.

In your instance ISO 5000, f2.8, 1/500 looks like it was working. As you get more proficient you may just dial a stop of shutter speed up or down if the ends of the court are darker or lighter (almost always darker). But don't worry about that to start with. Manual indoors will almost always result in more consistent results.

You were using AWB (auto white balance) and the newer cameras are very good with keeping correct color balance but look at using a CWB (custom white balance). This will usually give you a more true color than AWB. Look at your manual for set of instructions on how to set that with your camera.

The difference in lighting is caused by the lousy vapor lights most gyms have in them. They cycle various colors that are too fast for the eye to see, but the camera shooting at high speeds can pick up the cycle of colors. To help eliminate that I take my CWB shot at 1/30s to give the light one complete cycle allowing the shot to average out the color.

If you have more questions fire away. Great way to start with your new camera!

[finnbay]

Great answer as usual, Dan. I concur 100%. Some nice pix, by the way!

[ccarlson]

Thanks for the input. It is exactly what I was hoping for and although I know posting pictures of basketball on an outdoors forum may be odd, this site and the users are a lot friendlier than some of the photo sites I've visited. Also, my experience from years ago is in outdoor and wildlife photography so this action sports shooting is new to me.

I just picked up Lightroom 3 last night and was able to take out much of the noise associated with the higher iso's. Yes, the cameras are good but lightroom really can do some great stuff from what I can tell so far.

White balance for some reason is the most intimidating thing for me at this point (and I realize there are many things that I don't even know I don't know). So, your suggestions are really appreciated and I need to do some homework on the mechanics of white balance to better understand your suggestions. The light cycling aspect makes sense. The camera setting not so much. So, If I'm shooting 1/500th shutter speed and I set my WB to CWB 1/30s, even though the shutter is moving much faster, the camera will use 1/30 of a second to get a better reading of light? Or am I way off? How does that work if I am shooting 4-6 frames per second?

Like you said, it's time to read up but any more suggestions are appreciated.

ccarlson

[finnbay]

As Dan said, the cycling of lights really messes up white balance. The dropper white balance tool in Lightroom 3 works really well.

[Dbl]

You are on the right track! I can give you a complex explanation which Likely won't help you much but in fairly simple terms here is why I use 1/30s shutter speed.

The frequency of an AC source, your gym lighting is about 60 Hz. That means the light pulses 60 times a second. Your shutter speed is only 1/500 of a second, which means the shutter is opened for a much shorter duration than the time needed for the light to get a full pulse. Any shutter speed less than 1/60s will "average" out the different light colors during each pulse of the light.

In effect you are taking the average light cast during the cycling of a light to give you a better color balance. A burst of shots can clearly show the cycling, try it sometime. Shots in succession (your case 4 to 6 fps) will have different color balances. Simple right? My method gives you at best an average color, its not perfect but darn good.

Here is an example of what different color phases your lighting can be in. Red and green are the two most common color shifts. This is an old shot from years ago that happened to catch the lights. I cropped the heck out of it to concentrate on the lights.

The other thing you can do is shoot RAW. This allows you to set your white balance after the shot. If you are familiar with batch processing you can find a shot and get it color balanced and apply it to all of your shots. Drawbacks? Dealing with larger files, correcting each shot, etc. I shot almost exclusively JPG and just prefer to get it right in camera so I don't have to correct in post. Just me though!

If you shoot in the same gym you can also set a K temp for white balance. Shoot a few RAW frames and when you get home open them in LR or whatever you use for processing. Use a white dropper on a white subject and move it around to get the correct color balance. Note what the K temp is in the shot and just set your camera to that K temp.

Simple right? All this seems foreign but as you get more proficient and familiar with all the issues you deal with indoors it will become second nature. It has only taken me a few 100,000 shots indoors for me to get it but I am slower than your average photographer

[ccarlson]

Thanks again for the information. I took some photos last night at a game but did not have time to look through my book and familiarize myself with white balance settings you talked about. I did poke through the settings on camera though and noticed on the d7000 that there are preset white balance settings for different kinds of lights. You would have to be a certified electrician to know all the different types of lights listed but I found a preset for the type of lights I assumed the gym had and the pictures did turn out much closer to true colors.

Thanks again for the tips. I'll do more reading and experimenting and post as I get some results.

ccarlson

[Todd Caswell]

The fixtures in the brainerd Gym are a high bay flouresent, the lamps are a 5000K, The lighting got reto. a few years ago from 400 watt Metal Halide to flouresents, I hung some of them..

[Dbl]

Now that is some great info, a K temp to set and away you go! Todd, want to come to the cities and replace some lights in the dungeons I shoot in?