Camera Settings

[pgriz]

^^^ Darn good advice. That "parrot" knows her stuff. And this is one case where the equipment you have is just not going to be enough to do what you want it to do. The only way around it, if upgrading equipment or getting more light are not options, is to time your shot so that your daughter is in a stationary moment, and then the shutter speed you can use to get a decent exposure (say, 1/15 or 1/30 sec) will allow you to capture more-or-less blur-free images. But your hand-holding technique needs to be really good, and so does your timing.


Another idea to explore, however, is to deliberately use a slow shutter speed (with the camera on a tripod), to allow the gymnast motion to show. You won't get a clear face, under the circumstances, but you can capture some pretty interesting motion blurs. An example of such an image is here : A blur of motion on the uneven bars. | TIM CLAYTON PHOTOGRAPHY. In that case, the photographer was hand-holding the camera and was following the motion.

Edit: Amolitor types faster than me... but we both were going in the same direction .

 

[Tuffythepug]

If I were you, I would work with the blurry instead of against it.

Gymnastics is a powerful, dynamic thing. I would try to make images that capture that sense of motion. You have to shoot a *lot*, and at a bunch of shutter speeds, experimenting to find one or two "looks" that work well for you. Best will be moves that include a pause -- a beat or two where the athlete is perfectly still, and then moves, or the other way around motion followed by the pause. Then you capture a soft image of the athlete at rest, together with a misty impression of the motion that come before or after the pause.

I think, given your equipment and the environment, this is sound advice

 

[TCampbell]

They've all given you a great amount of support and information.
I am going to tell you that you probably aren't going to get good, indoor gymnastics photos with your camera. Your ISO maxes out at 1600 and to shoot in many gyms at a fast enough shutter speed 1600 is just not going to cut it. We're talking more like 3200 in the best gyms and as far as 12,800 in a lot of them.
You are going to need a shutter of 1/500 or faster. The uneven bars/parallel bars will probably require a speed even faster than that.
Max out the ISO, put your camera in shutter priority and set it at 1/500. If you can't get a shot you've hit your limits. The only other answer then is flash or a different camera.

That's a good point. I hadn't thought about the max ISO on the XTi. The OP hasn't posted an samples with EXIF data, but gyms generally don't offer adequate lighting for most equipment. A lens with a much lower focal ratio might help (e.g. an f/2 or faster lens) but even this may not be adequate. The "nifty fifty" (the lens that broke) is f/1.8... plenty on aperture, but it has a notoriously slow focusing motor and typically struggles to keep up with sports.

If the OP does decide to explore a new camera body, be aware that Canon offers a "loyalty" program. You can get significantly reduced pricing on a newer camera by trading in the XTi.

 

[Derrel]

Buy another Canon 50mm f/1.8...I know money is tight, but kids are only little once...scrimp someplace else for a couple of months, and buy that f/1.8 lens.

 

[MLeeK]

If I were you, I would work with the blurry instead of against it.

Gymnastics is a powerful, dynamic thing. I would try to make images that capture that sense of motion. You have to shoot a *lot*, and at a bunch of shutter speeds, experimenting to find one or two "looks" that work well for you. Best will be moves that include a pause -- a beat or two where the athlete is perfectly still, and then moves, or the other way around motion followed by the pause. Then you capture a soft image of the athlete at rest, together with a misty impression of the motion that come before or after the pause.

Amolitor has a great idea here. You are going to hit your limits hard and instead of fighting it perhaps embracing it and capturing the feeling of movement of the sport!!

 

[Goldcoin79]

If you go to you tube and type in Scott Kelby there is a video there that lasts about an hour and he talks about sports photography. This is a realy interesting video and he talks about shooting indoor sport and the lack of light you get, the way he shoots indoor sports is by shooting in apeture priorty mode and opening the apeture up as wide as possible then he increases the ISO up until the camera is selecting shutter speed fast enough to freeze the motion. He does say that the ISO is set up as far as 64000 at times so you may find your camara does not have enough range to do this if your camara does not have ISO setting that go this high.

 

[cool09]

For sports and/or low lighting you need a lens with a large aperture (and excellent glass helps achieve great detail) so you can shoot at fast speeds and let in lots of light to catch the action. I used to go to a lot of NHL games and they are a challenge to catch the action with good detail. (A lens with cheap glass limits the detail very, very much.) Here is my photostream at Flickr. (Canon 20D w/Sigma f2.8 50-150mm lens was a good equipment match for hockey.)

Flickr: cool09's Photostream