Help with Lighting - Volleyball Pic

Here is a recent VB pic I took. I love the action in this one. I shot with no flash, 1000 speed, and 1/200 shutter speed. I am using a 30D. What can I do to improve the overall color when shooting? post processing? Thanks! Please edit color if you want to.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

a flash off to the side will make all the difference... also, maybe try shooting from the side and increasing the iso so you can get a faster shutter speed. Set custom white balance and go fully manual for both the shutter and aperture.
unfortunately gymnasiums are a difficult beast to photograph in.

I am still confused about setting the custom white balance? Is this setting the light temperature? I will be doing basketball games in this gym in the next couple of weeks, so any hints are more than appreciated.

no problem... there's a lot of ways to shoot for a custom white balance.

The easiest way is to set your camera's manual settings for the light in the gym... using a light meter is probably the most accurate, then take a photo of something white, so that the white fills almost the entire frame. Then in the cameras menu settings, choose custom white balance and it will ask you to select the photo of the white object. Once you've selected it, change your white balance settings to custom.
That's all there is to it!

You will need to check the indivdual settings for your camera for how to do this, however the general principle is that you take a picture of a grey card under the lighting conditions that you are shooting in.

From there, you select the image in the CWB menu on your camera and it will "remember" this setting and apply it to all your pictures thereafter. This is different from setting the colour temperature manually where you can set the numeric value for the colour temperature.

Looking at the pic that you posted - I like the action you have captured, however would say that the white balance is off a little which is what is affecting the colours in my opinion. Setting a CWB next time should solve this and improve the colours.

Hope that this helps - I think there is a useful section on the "Sport Q&A with Gmen" thread that covers white balance very well indeed.

So do I use a gray card (bought at photo stores, correct?) or a white surface?

it actually doesn't matter... the camera gets the point

Here is the biggest problem with the CWB in most highschool gyms... most use vapor discharge type lamps that actually cycle, often very independently of each other. To your eye, you don't see it, but it is happening. It makes coming up with a single wb very hard at times. The good news is usually you will get 4 of 5 with the right wb going custom in these gyms. But the only way to "really" be sure your going to get it right is to shoot RAW. Then you can tweak to your hearts content to get the wb correct.

Well even at 200 shutter speed you get a pretty strong blur on their hands

Croasdail wrote in post #2332107
Here is the biggest problem with the CWB in most highschool gyms... most use vapor discharge type lamps that actually cycle, often very independently of each other. To your eye, you don't see it, but it is happening. It makes coming up with a single wb very hard at times. The good news is usually you will get 4 of 5 with the right wb going custom in these gyms. But the only way to "really" be sure your going to get it right is to shoot RAW. Then you can tweak to your hearts content to get the wb correct.

Dead on advice. Also dont be afraid to use higher ISO settings on your 30D to get that SS up. Ideally, 1/500 or greator. Also, keep in mind, action & emotion with the ball in play. Shoot tight, crop tight. Faces