A75 at the Hockey Arena

[HockeyDad]

Just bought an A75 and was taking pictures during my son's hockey game. The lighting was kind of dim, overhead halogen lights from the looks of things.

I know very little, or more accurately, nothing about photography. So I started with AUTO. I mostly got blurry shots, on the dark side, with the skater out of the picture because it took so long for the shutter to finally do its thing after pressing the button and holding it for what seemed forever.

I am totally impressed with what I'm seeing on this site and know that you can help me. In my self-diagnosis it occurred to me that one problem is the protective glass separating my camera from the subject. That may have been reflecting the auto-focus beam, giving me the wrong focal distance.

I then changed to the fast-shutter selection on the dial thinking that would fix everything, but things were still blurry.

I'm happy to experiment but there are so many things to play with that I don't know where to start. Should I start with a different shutter speed (faster, like 1/500) and aperture (open it up a bit, like 2.8) and go from there? Should I be trying to figure out how to go without the flash to get a more immediate shutter action (it would be so nice to get the players back into the picture)? Should I do manual focus (can you do this?) and guess where the action is going to be so I don't fall victim to the 'focus on the glass' problem?

If you could point me in the right direction, that would be great.

[S45_fornow...]

This setup might be a good starting point for the A75 indoors in an arena...

-Turn off flash
-Use higher ISO value.
-Set program mode to aperture priority (Av)
-Set aperture to lowest value (largest aperture)
-Set white balance to match indoor lighting
-Use focus lock
-Take some test shots and adjust EV accordingly.
-Experiment with Spot/Center-weighted metering.

Read the manual if you're unfamiliar with any settings. You can also trick the camera to over/underexpose the image by using the exposure lock while pointing at a brighter/darker area than where your subject is
located.

I took quite a few shots in a hockey arena a few years ago with my S45, but I shot everything RAW. A75 has no RAW format.

Hope this helps and doesn't confuse :roll:

[eastcoast909]

Yow! You're definately trying to do it the hard way.

Is it possible?? Well anything is possible but it will be darn hard with that setup.

The ice rink has to be one of the most difficult places to try and take photo's. People just don't understand how dim the light is (after all we can see very well can't we??) :wink: :wink: . However our eyes have compensated for the dim lighting conditions by opening the pupils up in our eyes.

The same thing has to happen in the camera. More light!! That means getting a bigger aperature (wider opening like our eyes do) slowing down the shutter speed (keeping our eyes open longer) and having more sensitive light gatherers (no eye analogy here sorry, :roll: ).

So what does all this mean to you?? Well set your sensor speed (ISO) to the fastest it will do. ISO 400 .(yes this will mean more noise, but we can clean that up later). This covers the sensitive light gatherer.

Slow down the shutter speed to 1/250 or even 1/125 if you can. We are looking for the slowest shutter speed possible and still achieve a stop action for the players.

If you can set the aperature set it to the smallest number (I see from the tech specs that the largest is f2.8, thats good :lol: )

I also see that the camera is capable of spot metering and manual shooting, pg. 77 and 78 in the manual. Set the camera to manual and the aperature and shutter speeds as above, set the focus metering to center as on page 78, and exposure metering to center as on page 79.

The shutter lag can be taken care of by following the action and just before you think that something will happen half depress the shutter to achieve focus. From this postion there will be almost no shutter lag when you finally fully depress the shutter. Unfortunately the camera does not have constant AI focus where it recognizes the intended subject and automatically adjusts the focus as you follow the play. You have to do the focus just prior to taking your shot or the intended subject will be out of focus.

Be aware, even with all this you may not achieve what you want to do with this camera. Most people shooting hockey in rinks are using a DSLR with a minimum of a 70-200mm f2.X lens (sigma, canon etc.)(sigma lens ~$700 USD, canon lens ~$1,100 USD (non IS))

The best you can do is get a close as possible and shoot lots, keeping track of your settings.

It is possible like I said but it will be very difficult. You might want to consider looking at a DSLR and associated lenses. :twisted: :twisted:

Hope that this helps.

Oh yes. do a search on the forum for "hockey" and you will get more on what other people are using for shooting inside rinks.

another thing.. no flash.