LUMMIX FZ18-How Do I take action shots

[txmom08]

How can I take shots like this in a low light gym and have them more sharp? I tried with flash, that makes pic dark.

My camera is a Panasonic FZ18

 

[ypperin]

turn the dial to sports (looks like a guy running) and choose indoors Hopefully that helps.

 

[Big Mike]

Trying to get sharp shots of moving subjects in a low light situation is asking a lot of your gear.

It would help to have a good understanding of how exposure works. You have three factors; the shutter speed, the aperture of the lens and the ISO.
To freeze moving subjects, you need fast shutter speeds, however the faster the shutter speed, the less light gets recorded...so you need to find a way to get more light. The first thing is to use the larges aperture your lens will allow (lowest F number). Once you have reached the limit of your aperture, the next thing you can do is to turn up the ISO setting. As you turn up the ISO, the faster the shutter speed you can use...however the trade off is that higher ISO will give you more digital noise.

It may very well be that you just can't open the aperture enough or turn the ISO up high enough to get the results you want (or the high ISO is just too terrible to use). In this case, you are out of luck because you can't change the lens on your camera. The other option for people with interchangeable lenses would be to get a lens with a bigger maximum aperture.

To take things in another direction, you can add light if you don't have enough. Using flash for example. It sounds like you have tried using flash but it's likely that you were just too far away for your built-in flash to be effective. Again, this is a limitation of your camera.

So I'd suggest that you use aperture priority mode and set the largest aperture (smallest number). Then take some test shots and see what shutter speed you are getting. If it's not fast enough to freeze the action, then turn up the ISO as high as you dare.