D90 exposure setting and white balance

[camjam]

My son's swim season has started...think poorly lite pool area, lots of very fast action, no flash allowed. Home pool area is painted a light blue, swim suits are blue, lane lines are blue and white and the center lane line painted on the floor of the pool is black and the ceiling is natural wood color. Conditions are similar at other pools where he swims. We are new/beginners to photography and I am trying to understand what each setting camera is doing and how to correct some issue were are encountering. The camera is a D90, Tamron 70-200 2.8 lens, 4.5 frames per second.

With the camera set on the auto sports mode, we get some great photos....action stopped, sharp image, in focus, good color, but we also get out of focus and blue tinted photos....sometimes right after the good photo at the 4.5 setting. For most photos, the camera is selecting 500 on shutter speed, 2.8 on aperture and 1600 on the ISO. White balance on auto.

If I use the "S" shutter priority mode with the shutter speed at 500, the camera selects F2.8 and lowers the ISO to 1000/1100. Again the white balance in on auto. This usually give us a consistently blue tinted photos which I assume is a white balance issue.

If I use the "A" aperture setting with the aperture set at 2.8 the camera selects a shutter speed between 30 and 50 and an ISO of 1100 or less. The photos have good color but look out of focus...face look soft...not sharp or detailed.

If I choose "M" and set the camera to the auto sports settings..shutter 500, aperture 2.8 and an ISO of 1600 or 3200 (3200 looks better) and white balance on auto. We get some good photos, but then we get some blue tinted photos. Actually more than on the sports mode which I don't understand since the setting are the same.

Not sure if the issue is just white balance or if it has something to do with where we are standing in relationship to where the swimmer is in the pool. The water changes color from shallow end to deep end of the pool. Any help would be appreciated in getting the camera set so we get consistent photos.

Thank you,
Jim

 

[o hey tyler]

The best advice to get consistent photos ESPECIALLY regarding white balance would be to set it yourself. Put your D90 on live view, and scroll through the white balance options to see which gets it closest to how your eye perceives it. The whites should look as close to white as possible.

The reason you got less than sharp photos on Aperture Priority mode is because the shutter speed it selected was way too low for any kind of sports shooting. Your shutter speed should always be AT LEAST 1/focal length. So, if you are shooting at 200mm, your shutter speed should be AT LEAST 1/200s. But it should be more like 1/250s because you are on a crop frame camera.

The only reason your WB is fluctuating is because your camera is choosing it for you, and your camera doesn't get everything right 100% of the time. No camera does. I'd suggest you get more comfortable with setting your camera up manually to get consistent shots. The good thing about swim meets is that they may not be well lit, but they are evenly lit. So that means you can set your camera for the exposure at the swim meet, and not have to worry about it (except for maybe some minute changes depending on the situation).

Shooting in RAW format and processing your photos with a raw handler will also render much better results. You will have much more leeway in terms of bring back exposure or details over a standard in camera jpeg. If the white balance is off by a little bit, you can change it in your RAW editor and it will look much better than a JPEG that had it's white balance adjusted.

Hope this was somewhat helpful to you.

Good luck!

 

[Dillard]

I've also hear that the Tamron 7-200 is soft at 2.8, so they may be a little bit of the problem with focus

 

[sleist]

If I use the "A" aperture setting with the aperture set at 2.8 the camera selects a shutter speed between 30 and 50 and an ISO of 1100 or less. The photos have good color but look out of focus...face look soft...not sharp or detailed.

This statement makes it sound like you are using "Auto ISO". I would suggest that you not do that in this circumstance. 30 - 50 is too slow a shutter speed for that lens. Set the ISO to 1000 - 1600 to get a faster shutter speed. Either that, or set auto ISO to not drop below 1/200 of a second (just an example). This will force the camera to boost the iso sooner to maintain that minimum shutter.

I read somewhere as well that the random changes in hue/wb under artificial lighting might be due to the lighting and the frequency of the flourescents. I know I haven't described this correctly.
I'll see if I can find it through google.

Here you go

 

[KmH]

The US power grid is 60 hertz AC. Sixty times every second the voltage varies smoothly from +60 volts to -60 volts in a sinusoidal wave.

With some light sources, the light color temperature also changes with that 60 x per second fluctuation.

 

[camjam]

Thank you for your thoughts. At my local camera shop I was given two things to consider. Without seeing the camera, one thought was the sensor might be malfunctioning, I am hoping this is not so as we do not want to give up the camera for four weeks while it is sent out for repair. Second person said not to set the WB as lighting could change as we moved around the pool deck. Also water color for shallow end to deep end could affect lighting. So, I am confused if I should continue to let the camera choose the WB or set it. Do I need a grey card or can I just take a picture of something white and adjust from there?

Sleist...I was trying various settings including letting the camera set the ISO. Also set the ISO manually. Also played with the White Balance settings, but WB is difficult for me. It seems that what I see on the camera display is not always what I see on the computer monitor.

Jim