High Schhol.....

[BaseballPhotographer]

I am going to be attending a lot of my High School basketball, and volleyball games. They are all indoors. I have a Canon Rebel XTi, 18-55mm, and the 70-300mm, I know I need a faster lens, but until I get one, what setting should I have my camera on? ISO speed, f-stop, etc...? Thank you for any advice

Stephen

[Bumgardnern]

Shoot at the widest aperture, and ISO that you can. To stop action well a lot of the time your shutter speed will need to be around 1/500.

[johnms88]

This is at least the 5th thread you have started asking what settings your shots should be on for sports. Please do some reading (ex. stickies at the top of the threads) and learn how to properly expose your images without having to ask every time. You will never get the perfect answer from a forum. No one here can see the conditions you will be shooting in so no one will be able to give you a different answer than "lowest f stop highest iso" (which you have gotten every time thus far).

[dmwierz]

Sigh...

Stephen, open your lens as far as it should go and keep your shutter speed above 1/400s.

As has been said before, stop posting these "what should I do?" threads and go out and shoot some stuff. If you're in High School, you have an unending supply of almost daily opportunities to photograph all kinds of sports, at pretty competitive levels. Basketball is just finishing up, with wrestling and basketball playoffs coming up, then soccer, baseball, water polo, etc, etc,. Trust me, I spent 2-3 nights each week shooting HS stuff. This is a great place to learn, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will teach you how to become a sports photographer quicker and more effectively than actually DOING IT.

At some point, you're gonna need to get better equipment, too, especially if you do much indoor stuff.

There are quite a few tutorials in the sticky on the top of this forum on "how to shoot___" - check these out.

[shannyD]

sell off your two lenses and get an 85mm 1.8. they are about three hundred dollars. get a loan from your mom and dad, aunt or uncle for the remainder, and do some chores or something. the lenses that you have are pretty much useless because they are slow.

i dont think you fall into the price range of a 70-200 f/2.8 is yet. but someday you will.

keep going out and shooting. practice at school. thats where your going to get the best practice because trying to make that 300mm look good fully extended is difficult. because it gets soft and looks out of focus when its at 300. i have that lens as well, and gets very very little use.

go with the 85mm and go shoot. your photos will look leaps and bounds better than what you are producing now. it has low light abilities, and does a fine job on the xti.

shannon

[namasste]

I agree with Shannon. Either that, or spend even less and buy a flash. That would allow you to get some nice color contrast, stop action, and force you to work on timing which can only make you better.

[superdiver]

You will find that even at f2.8 you probably will not have enough light. Also, many of these places DO NOT allow flash.

Get the 85 1.8 and you will be set, less the $500.