First attempt at shooting indoor sport

neonpollen

neonpollen

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Name
Andy
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Well I tried my hand at some indoor sports photography last night, one of the guys on my photography evening class runs a Taekwondo School and asked if I'd like to come along and get some shots.

The light in the sport hall was terrible, I tried Auto, Tungsten, Fluorescent white balance and they all gave a horrible an orange cast, so I took a close up photo of his white suit and set the custom white balance from that. Even then I had to tweak it in camera raw, the light seems to have a temperature of 2000 kelvin.

I was struggling with keeping the shutter speed up and had to go up to 800 ISO :( and as I was over-exposing by 1/2 a stop to keep the white from going grey, even then I think I should have overexposed a little more. It was a very good learning experience though and I can go back any time I like and try again as long as I let them use some photo's on their website.

Anyway here are the best of the bunch, C&C welcome

Image_11-12-2006_21-19-04_0101.jpg


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Image_11-12-2006_21-13-11_0089.jpg
 
Practice, practice - experimenting is the best way to crack this low light stuff. Takes alot of effort and patience to get it right.

Looks good from here, particularly for a first attempt (y)
 
Something different you've put up for us ... and it taught you a thing or two along the way ... can't be bad ... (y)

A good set posted Andy ... but I think you have already highlighted the main problems you experienced ... ;)

As WS says ... practice what you have picked up and let's see how the improvement goes ... you have a great offer there from the club ... go for it ... :thinking:

I would say some of the shots show a little blur from movement ... imo it either wants to be a feature or disposed of altogether ... at the moment I don't think it's either ... but early days ... :shrug:

You could also do with isolating the subject a bit more from the background ... good chance to practice with DoF effects ... :D

TFS ... :p
 
2nd shot is really good. Must have been hard shooting their white kit.
 
Nice start. Good work on the custom WB and well thought out. I think I would go to 1600 here and open it up as fast as you can, maybe get to 400/500 to try and freeze it. Of course, if you get some hi ISO grain then b and W them and put together a photo essay, it would look fab.

I think I would look to shoot the faces so position yourself behind either of the folks taking part and capture some visceral impact stuff from the faces, then look to capture some hands hitting on impact as best you can. (see my fight stuff as an example).

Finally, may be worth bouncing a flash in second curtain + hi speed to see how that helps light it for you.

Nice start and a great place to educate yourself with you camera and your cards.
 
Thanks for the comments and tips, I think next time I'll open the aperture right up, to isolate the combatant more and up the ISO until I get a high shutter speed in the range Diego suggested.

As for flash I'm not sure they'll be keep on my using it but I will ask, also the ceiling is very high so I'm not sure how effect it would be. Could I bounce it off the walls though ? would that have the same effect ?

When shooting things like this is it best to use just one AF point or select them all and let the camera handle it? last night I select just one AF point and quite a lot of the shot were very soft.
 
neonpollen said:
Thanks for the comments and tips, I think next time I'll open the aperture right up, to isolate the combatant more and up the ISO until I get a high shutter speed in the range Diego suggested.

As for flash I'm not sure they'll be keep on my using it but I will ask, also the ceiling is very high so I'm not sure how effect it would be. Could I bounce it off the walls though ? would that have the same effect ?

When shooting things like this is it best to use just one AF point or select them all and let the camera handle it? last night I select just one AF point and quite a lot of the shot were very soft.
Click to expand...


Always focus and target the face. That is the shot (y)

Think about a monopod as well :)
 
Great set for a first time (y) They are so clean and crisp, iso 800 indoors is fantastic I woulden't be dissapointed if I got that every week. As Diego said get the action and power in the faces and you can get soe really nice stuff with blurred out backgrounds and so on. Can't wait to see the second selection :)
 
Big respect, I'm still eons away from reaching the stage you're at, getting those whites right etc:notworthy:

Thanks for telling us how you did it, and the problems you solved along the way. The whole White Balance thing is something I have to learn.

I think I agree with Diego; maybe try pushing the ISO right up and doing them in BW. But then, I'm a sucker for grainy prints in mono! It should look good with the white.

I'm looking forward to seeing the next bunch! (y)
 
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