Action photography

D

Dr4ke

Messages
82
Name
Simon
Edit My Images
Yes
As per recommendation; I am posting this on this forum in order to attract the right audience and categorize it under the right heading (original thread URL: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=508418)

have been asked to help with some action photography, specifically a wrestling match, and I thought this would be some really good practice; as it's family and it's practice for me I wont be charging.

I'm posting on here for some tips on how to do some good shots. I have a Nikon D3200 with a 50mm 1.8G, 18-55mm (kit lens), 55-300mm. Some examples of the tip(s) i'm after are what lens I should use (do I go for a telephoto or do I stick with a prime for a larger aperture possibility), what is the lowest shutter speed should I use for action shots (so I can then compensate with higher ISO & aperture etc) and any other useful tips!

For information I'll be at ring side, walking around the ring to take pictures.

Any tips welcome!
 
to follow on: my approach would probably be to assess the light, set the aperture to 1.8 if its dark, up the ISO to the max and see what s/s you get to get a proper exposure. An underexposed shot will have lots of noise in it when you try to lighten it. this is where expensive kit with very high ISO become most useful.
 
Thank you! Hopefully I won't need the highest ISO as I don't have a pro camera and fear it may produce bad photo's at that setting
 
Better to have sharp noisey images than blurred images due to slow shutter speed. Dont be scared to up the ISO...you have to try it to find out what the limits of the camera body are.
 
You should be ok with using a higher iso, shoot raw then manually apply noise reduction, noise ninja is a fantastic ps plug in, but you can get good results just with acr
 
Tugster said:
Better to have sharp noisey images than blurred images due to slow shutter speed. Dont be scared to up the ISO...you have to try it to find out what the limits of the camera body are.
Click to expand...

Thats the best advice I ever received and it is so true.
 
Thanks! So your recommendation would be to shoot high ISO than use a flash?

I know that using a flash indoors is not always best, as it doesn't deliver great results on occasions (and it reduces the aperture possible). I don't yet have any editing software (I'm considering Lightroom) so how would I reduce noise reduction etc? I think the best thing for me to do is try it and watch tutorials!

Does anybody know how the D3200 fairs with a 64000 ISO?
 
if its similar to an 1100D canon then it will be fine with a little bit of playing. :)
 
It looks fairly similar :)

Could you elaborate on what you mean by 'playing'? What software do you use, what do you alter etc etc. I have literally never PP so am new to it all.
 
Dr4ke said:
Thanks! So your recommendation would be to shoot high ISO than use a flash?

I know that using a flash indoors is not always best, as it doesn't deliver great results on occasions (and it reduces the aperture possible). I don't yet have any editing software (I'm considering Lightroom) so how would I reduce noise reduction etc? I think the best thing for me to do is try it and watch tutorials!

Does anybody know how the D3200 fairs with a 64000 ISO?
Click to expand...

6400?, I doubt you would need to go that high 3200 wide open should be more than enough, I would leave flash alone, as balancing the kelvins from different light sources would become tricky.
With lightroom comes a raw processor called acr it's the same as photoshops this will allow you to manually adjust how much noise reduction you want
 
Thanks Darrell - it's purely for practice (I'm not being payed) so even if it all goes wrong it doesn't matter :)
 
Dr4ke said:
Thanks Darrell - it's purely for practice (I'm not being payed) so even if it all goes wrong it doesn't matter :)
Click to expand...

That's the best way to do things, just get out there and shoot, did your camera not come with its own raw processor software, the canon's do, and although I don't use it myself I have heard they are quite good.
 
It did come with its own RAW processor, but I am thinking about Lightroom as I want to do some proper PP.
 
That makes sense then, I have lightroom 5, don't use it quite as much as I used to as most of my Pp is done within photoshop but lightroom is a fantastic piece of software.
 
Hi Simon
I am no expert but I have done a little bit of the type of photography your talking about see here http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=485754 these were taken with a 17-50mm f2.8 zoom all at around 3200 ISO so this will give you some idea what sort of noise to exspect. These were shot as JPEGs as the action can be quite frantic and you dont want the buffer on your camera jamming up if you shoot a long sequence of images. As has been said above a low angle can produce really powerful images. There are quite a lot more images on my Flickr page if your interested http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_talbot_1958/8755499702/in/set-72157633521176787
 
Have shot a few martial arts tournaments. I. Badly lit halls I shoot wide open 1.8 and adjust the ISO as required. I only shoot jpg as sell on site and no time to convert.
 
That's the advantages of shooting jpeg, but of course by doing so, you need to make sure that your wb is set correctly first, and know your iso limitations, if I shoot jpeg which isn't often I can't really go above 2000 but using raw I'm happy to push to 6400 then run through noise ninja in photoshop.
The main plus of jpeg is that you can take much bigger bursts without filling your buffer
 
Hi Chris - Thanks for your advice; I am certainly more open to opening up the ISO now! The camera you are using - is it a DX or FX type? Sorry I only really know Nikon's, I'm not sure if it's similar to my D3200 or very different/better...

Darrell - thanks for your advice as well, I will be shooting RAW. However, I don't have Photoshop (I'm considering Lightroom) - is there a similar such tool for LR? I've not heard of noise ninja, so don't know if it's compatible with LR too?
 
Dr4ke said:
Hi Chris - Thanks for your advice; I am certainly more open to opening up the ISO now! The camera you are using - is it a DX or FX type? Sorry I only really know Nikon's, I'm not sure if it's similar to my D3200 or very different/better...

Darrell - thanks for your advice as well, I will be shooting RAW. However, I don't have Photoshop (I'm considering Lightroom) - is there a similar such tool for LR? I've not heard of noise ninja, so don't know if it's compatible with LR too?
Click to expand...

Noise ninja should be compatible if not it can be used as a standalone program anyway, even without noise ninja the adobe acr which is identical for lightroom and photoshop does a decent job by itself anyway
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top