action pictures

[volleyball mom]

Hello. I am a little new with this, but I was trying to ask for some help with my camera settings. I am taking indoor action shots(volleyball) and my pictures are pretty crisp, but some are a little burred. For example a persons hand while serving or the ball in the picture. everything else will be good. I have tried to up the speed, but the photos become too dark. What other setting do I need to change? Thanks for any help. Volleyball Mom

[DDCSD]

Welcome to POTN!

What camera and lens are you using? Can you post an example of what went wrong?

Likely you need a bit "faster" lens, since it sounds like you are getting motion blur due to having too slow of a shutter speed. upping your ISO and using a wider aperture (smaller number) can help, but sometime you just need a little better lens.

Indoor volley ball can be very tough to shoot. The gym is usually dark and the action is quick.

[Zonieart]

If you have a SLR body, put your ISO as high as it will go. Try putting your selector switch in "Av" mode and then adjust the aperature down to the lowest number you can. Like DDCSD said, we need to know what kind of camera and lens you have.

[JeffreyG]

Originally Posted by volleyball mom

Hello. I am a little new with this, but I was trying to ask for some help with my camera settings. I am taking indoor action shots(volleyball) and my pictures are pretty crisp, but some are a little burred. For example a persons hand while serving or the ball in the picture. everything else will be good. I have tried to up the speed, but the photos become too dark. What other setting do I need to change?

If increasing the shutter speed makes the pictures darker, I presume you are shooting in M mode?

If this is the case there are two steps you can take to keep the same exposure with a faster shutter speed.
1. Open up the lens more (lower aperture #) to let in more light. This supposes you are not wide open already.
2. Higher ISO.

If the lens is already wide open and you are at the highest ISO you can use, then you need a faster lens or a camera with higher usable ISO.

[40Dude6aedyk]

For "settings", despite all the fancy buttons on your camera, you really only have three: ISO, shutter-speed, and aperture.

If the action is fast and you want stop action without flash, then you need a faster shutter speed as already written above. To get adequate light with a 1/500th SS, you are probably gonna need an aperture of f/2 or better.

If you increase your ISO to 1600 or 3200, then you may get noisy results. So use noise reduction software that you can download from the web. Noiseware has a free community version.

If your pictures are too dark, you can also try to lighten them up in post processing. Are you shooting in RAW mode? Do you have DPP or other software that you can use?

Alot of the nice shots you see on web sites and newspapers have been processed with noise reduction and other tricks. Once you are able to use the same tricks, you may like your results better.

Good luck!

[Mike R]

Welcome to POTN. The lens you use can make a major difference in the type of shots you get. Most gyms have very poor lighting. It may seem fine when watching a game but it's terrible for a camera. Sine we don't know what you are using or what your budget is, I'll start by recommending a real bargain of a lens and that would be the 50mm f/1.8 It sells for about $70. But you may have to be able to get down from the stands and be able to move to get the shots you want. For about $500 you can get a nice 17-50mm f/2.8 zoom lens from Tamron although it's possible that 2.8 may not be fast enough. I shoot basketball in one gym that I need to open up to f/2.2
Another good lens is the 85mm f/1.8 at less than $400.