High School Swimming - Arapahoe Relays

In Littleton Colorado today, Arapahoe HS hosted the Arapahoe Relays, 2 hours of all kinds of relays that tested the talent & depth of teams. This photo shows the start of 1 race and due to typical indoor lighting at pools and constraints from my Kodak Z712IS, this is the best I could get. One of these days I'll get that SLR.

423mm, ISO200, f3.2, 1/40s.

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I'm sure you're a long way from where you want to be without an SLR, but you can improve this shot by just three tweaks in less than a minute - adjust the white balance, lighten up some of the shadows and crop out the stainless air ducts.

At 1/40 ss you're going to get a lot of blur - but at this angle that does not hurt your shot.

The area your shooting from i wouldn't recommend for the amount of distance your are from the pool, i would recommend repositioning yourself around the starting line where the swimmers dive into the pool, and also improve on the composition since this is too wide and too much distractions from the other swimmers queuing over behind the blocks.

A SLR is a great investment cause you have more control to how you can shoot and motor drive allows you to shoot at faster frames and ability to use higher shutter speeds to capture the motion.

dig-it-al wrote in post #7478029
423mm, ISO200, f3.2, 1/40s.

Are you sure about the 423mm focal length? I don't think I've ever seen a pool that large to have such a wide field of view at over 400mm. That and your exif says 10.5mm (62mm in 35mm equivalent).