My first foray into indoor sports photography has been an interesting one. Today was my son's second lacrosse game, and I have to tell you, shooting action is great fun but it isn't easy. (My son is #18.) I read a lot about shooting indoor sports under bright florescent lights this past week. Not the greatest conditions to achieve really fast shutter speeds without pushing your ISO to the max. And you know what happens to the quality of your photos when your ISO is at its peak. You get lots of digital noise in your pictures. The lighting was so bad in this particular indoor sports center that my ISO had to be pushed to 6400 just to get a shutter speed of 1/400 of a second. So the pictures came out grainy even though I had my noise reduction on its highest setting.
To the untrained eye, the photos look pretty good, but to experienced photographers, well that's another story. I welcome your feedback concerning this dilemma when shooting indoor sports. What has been your experience, and how do you deal with it?
8 comments:
You are right, Judy, about shooting sports being tough, especially action shots indoors. Honestly, I have never taken any indoor sports shots, but used to do outdoors football games. Of course, that was when I was using a 35mm SLR and telephoto lens and 400 tri-X film. Wonder how many digital shooters can remember those days?
Hi Beatrice,
Yes I used to have a 35 mm film camera too. An Olympus OM-10 to be exact. Loved the camera. I used to develop my own pictures in the dark room and everything. Those were the days. At the time I had that camera I wasn't shooting sports games, just candids of my friends in college. Had lots of fun!!
Thanks for commenting!
Blessings,
Judy
Hi Judy,
My kids played soccer and hockey. I pushed the ISO level up and hoped for the best. The one thing I noticed was the importance of getting the ball or puck in the photo, otherwise a great shot just looked like two people in funny positions! (-: I think your photos are really good! I have to say i didn't have much interest in sports photography, just enough to put a few photos into the kid's scrapbooks!
Hi, Wonderful shots. I have a little one in my family fold that plays hockey and hope capture him when he really starts to go.
Hi Judy , Yes I used a macro lens. I have a 100mm Canon and a 60mm canon. Do you . You must also.
Thanks for coming by
Hugs
and Stay warm. Its snowing here again. Winter Blizzard coming in. I always love the snow but not going out in it too long.
Thanks for dropping by my blog. Though I've done a lot of photography in both professional portrait work years ago and more recently nature and landscape just for PHUN, my only experience with sports photography is trying to capture the Grandkids in action.
First, I'd like to say that looking at these I'm betting you did as good a job as you could considering the location, lighting, camera equipment that you have etc. As a matter of fact I can only give one major recommendation, assuming it is possible I would suggest you try to get more and closer faces, of course particularly your son's. If you want to see great sports photos look at the popular photo magazines like Sports Illustrated, or maybe even your local paper's sports section. What do they show most of the time??? - action faces. Focus (pun intended) on that and you'll be happier with your sports photos.
Hope this gives you some ideas and I look forward to seeing you again.
Hi Judy. I'm afraid I'm not going to be much help. I have no experience with sports photography, and like someone else said, my action shots usually consist of trying to chase a moving toddler! I agree with Scott, that sometimes there are situations where it's just not possible to get great shots, and this would be one. You'll just have to deal with noise, and try to remove it afterwords with one of the many programs out there. I use Lightroom or Topaz Denoise, and both work well. You've done a good job getting the lighting to look natural, and I agree with Scott that the best sports shots are done with a zoom lens and show the 'thrill of victory' or the 'agony of defeat' on the faces of the players.
Hi, You know I started just like you but just got my flash. I didnt need it as you can us the on board flash in other ways to diffusse the light and it worked for me for a few years now.
I started with one lens and worked my way up to a few and then a second camera also lost a tripod along the way. Left it and someone grabbed it right away. That broke my heart. So I did finally get a new one. I need it for macros. Im not steady enough to hand hold for macros . Some can. I cant. It is expensive your right but if its what you love to do and create memories for you and others than its all worth it in the end. Keep on going. I think so many of us have the time of our life and also it a great way to forget the problems of the world around me when Im with my camear.. They just arnt there any longer.
Thanks for coming by .
Hugs
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