I'm so frustrated

I have been trying for 2 months to get some decent gymnastics pictures. Are the conditions just too tough, or is there something I can try? Help me!

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These are really not that bad. I do alot of shooting in high school gyms and the lighting is always poor. The only problems I see here is the distracting backgrounds. This is hard to avoid at events like this. Looks like you used a good shutter speed to stop the action. Just keep trying. Sometimes you have to take alot of bad ones to get the really good ones.

like i recomended in the diving thread... ALLTHOUGH YOU WILL GET PEOPLE TELLING YOU OTHERWISE..

Try shooting RAW Manual mode @ 1600ISO F1.8 and 400-500TV and then bump the exposure in RAW conversion


I remind you that you will have more noise, but I think you will find it acceptable at 5x7 and you will at least get the shot. I would rather nail the shot and have a little noise vs having a super clean picture of a blury subject. BUT REMEMBER, DO NOT TRY THIS WITH JPG and if you wish, just try it with a hand full to test

also looking again, I dont think you are getting the focus correct, I notice that you seem to be back focusing, @ 1.8 you arent getting DOF ay biger than 10ft i would imagine and the bkg in the first shot is in focus and well outside the 10ft area.. Are you shooting center point only;?

I just find it incredible that the backgrounds are as sharp as they are with the wide apertures being used. I would have expected some blurring on the f/1.8 shot, at least. Deep DOF is good in certain situations but this is one situation where you probably want shallow DOF to blur out the distracting background. But, having said that, I'm not sure how you can accomplish that considering you were probably aready at the widest aperture available on the lens. Maybe getting a little closer to the subject might help but it looks like you already were.

You have had some excellent suggestions - shoot RAW with manual settings is absolutely the way to go. In addition, use AI Servo, not AI Servo AF. The latter takes longer to calculate focus. Single focus point only to speed up the AF as well.

Those don't look bad at all KTG.

And if you bump the ISO there's always the freeware Noiseware to do noise reduction. And gmitchel has a nice tutorials and actions for masking for nose reduction - thiss is more work but is a huge improvement over straight NR. Check http://www.thelightsri​ght.com and check his Digital Darkroom.


Another option would be to bribe the lighting guys.

Lots of good ideas here.

If you can try and shoot tighter, that will help the AF to track the subject more easily. Also, this will make the most of the shallow DOF, isolating the subject matter more succesfully from the distracting backgrounds - this will be particularly true if you can shoot at the 200mm end of your 70-200mm zoom.

Thanks so much you all!!

Ok I try that. But what if I'm using my f.28 lens( usually I'm too far away to use the f1.8 50mmor the f1.8 85mm)?
I've never tried shooting in RAW. Do you all like Adobe's tutorial? I see a lot of people recommend "Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS". Do you know if it is compatable with my PS 7?

I think I was. I've changed my settings so many times, I don't remember. Right now it's on center point only. Is that bad?

Yea, no kidding. It was so dark in the gym where the beam picture is taken I could hardly see to keep score.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Do you mean I should manually focus?

The problem with that is then they change direction and jump up in the air and I cut of their heads or feet or arms or something

PS 7 requires a plugin to read Adobe RAW (wont read it natively like CS does)

KartGirlsMom, those photos don't look very bad!

The lighting is not bad (not over- or underexposed), they don't look blurry (you've used a fast shutter speed to stop motion), the colours look OK, so what's wrong with them?

It would help if you'd explain exactly why you're not satisfied with them, that would enable people to give you more useful advice for you to achieve your goal.

Since this thread revived I looked at them again and i have to agree. They're not bad at all. I'd print them - the action in the first is great.

I am amazed by the amount of DoF in the second, even at f/2.8.

I think she is missing the subject and focusing on the background. I think if you cant nail the focus, you would have more luck manual focusing on something in the same focal plane as the subject and purely relying on the DOF