Volleyball with G3

[G3Hawaii]

Anyone have suggestions for shooting volleyball with a G3 in poor light? Where should I start with my settings? I'm assuming I will have to deal with the grain at ISO 400

[al606]

I shoot a lot of minor hockey, conditions are similar + I'm usually freezing my behind off.

I have a G1, pretty close, and find ISO400 intolerably noisy even with Noise Reduction so usually stick with ISO200. The small CCD on the Gx series can only do so much. You can forget the flash, it won't do much good and most sports don't want you to use it anyways as it distracts the athletes.

If you're after action shots, start with 1/400 and let the camera tell you what the aperature should be. You might need to go a little faster, of course you're giving up more light with each incremenet and post-processing can only do so much. I typically do that a couple of times to get a reading and some sample pics, then switch to manual mode with the combination which looks most promisting on the LCD. I've tried playing with exposure settings, IMHO it doesn't make a whole lot of difference and I find it just makes the post-processing trickier as I sometimes end up with blown out areas . It's important to note that every arena or gym is different.

Finally, I usually use manual focus set to 10' or infinity (don't really get much closer in hockey) and that combined with the manual setting eliminates any lag in shooting.

Hope this helps.

[G3Hawaii]

Thanks for the advice. I will have to try it out next weekend.