ISO verses speed and lighting.

Rodney

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Looking for any advice here. I will be shooting my daughters volleyball matches this year. This is new to me because I do ninety percent of my shots out doors.
Here is the situation, Last night I went to some practice matches to make sure that I had the camera set up correctly before the season starts. I am using my new Nikon D3000. I have a 55 mm lense and a 200mm lense. It was a package deal. I was using to 200 mm lense.
I knew from my film experience that I would need to increase the ISO because of the movement of the athletes and the dimmer lighting. But it didn't seem to help; the pics were dim and blurred. I even increased the ISO to 1600, without any beneficial change regarding shutter speed or f stop. At 1600 the blur from movement was okay, but the lighting was no better. But far to grainy for the end of year slide show.
I was shooting in manual mode with the aperature at 4 (Max) and a shutter speed of 1/125.
If I slowed the shutter speed, the lighting was better but increased the blur. The tough thing is that I am not allowed to use a flash.
I even tried it with and without ISO sensitivity turned on. I increased the E.V (I think that it was it was called) several times but it didn't seem to help.
I know that there would have been a very noticable differences if I was using film. 400 woud have worked okay.
So what am I doing wrong?
All advice is welcome.
Thank you.
 
you are not doing anything wrong. shooting sport indoor requires fast lens and fast camera which cost a good amount of money. Unfortunately in your case, you don't have neither of them. Professional indoor stadium has good lighting but HS gym are horrible. I think the best thing you can do right now is to buy a fast prime lens like a 50mm f1.4. You will lose the versatile of a zoom lens but will gain much better IQ and speed. Hope this help, good luck.
 
You aren't doing anything wrong.

Simply put, without supplimental lighting the situation exceeds the capabilities of your gear.

Dedicated and pro sports shooters spend 10's of thousands of dollars on cameras and lenses.

Nikon's D3000 is their base entry level camera and has a CCD images sensor. The top of their entry level cameras is the D90 and it has a CMOS image sensor that delivers quite a bit better ISO performance, though you will still be on the edge of performance even with faster glass (AF 80-200 mm f/2.8D, $1200 new.).

To readily handle the situation and accord you some latitude for creative adjustments I would suggest you look at the D700 and at least an AF 80-200 mm f.2.8 zoom lens, if budget allows.
 
400 speed film should have the same sensitivity as 400 on the digital body, so I'm not sure that film would have worked any better...

To me it sounds like the lights just aren't very bright... In that case, there isn't really anything you can do.

Your only option is to raise the ISO even more, but if 1600 was too grainy - it will only get worse from there.

You could buy a faster lens, but even a 200mm f/2.8 would have trouble - from what you're saying. If 1600 & 1/125 is underexposed at f/4, all f/2.8 is going to do is give you one more stop of exposure. You'll still have to shoot at 1600...
 
This is where the Nikon D700 ISO comes handy. I did not have a fast lens at the time but still manage to freeze the action

ISO25,000! 1/650th sec, f5.2
_VNV2940.jpg
 
Yeah...DIeselboy's got the right idea...you need to shoot in RAW, and deliberately underexpose about 1 and 2/3 f/stops, and lighten the images in post...OR buy a faster lens, like a 50/1.4 AF-S G which will autofocus on your D3000,and which will allow in a lot more light.
 
Another point worth mentioning, if you want to spend big bucks on new gear, is to try and capture the action at the point where it is slowest - ie someone at the peak of a jump - that way you can get away with a slower shutter speed.
 
I feel your pain.

I shot a bunch of friends paintballing back in May, indoors, with ****ty lightening. All I had was my D5000, 55-200mm. I was also shooting through a mesh screen, so flash was out, and the screen caused focusing issues (even on manual, was hard to tell if it was in focus because of the mesh).

I shot pretty much at ISO 1600 and tried to get as many shots as possible with the least movement of the players. The moving shots were fairly blurred to the lower shutter speed. If you want comparisons, check them out on my flickr (too many to post here, but here's a link to the set).

You can see the EXIF info on each one to see what ISO/Shutter/f was used.

GeekCon 2010 - a set on Flickr
 
Hey, Thanks for your answers everyone. Well there is some relief to know that it wasn't anything that I was doing. And since there is no way, short of robbing a bank, that I will be able to invest major bucks into more equipment, I guess I will just have to get creative. Hopefully there may be some gyms that are a little better lighted. Wishful thinking:lol:.
I have never shot any in RAW. Is it complicated to work with? I have Paint Shop Pro 7 to work with. So not sure what I would even be doing. I am sure that there are other Raw discussions on this sight so if it is too complex to explain here, could you point me in the right direction?
Thanks again.
I really do apprectiate your answers.
 
This is why some photographers will shell out the $5300 on a D3S even though they've already spent $8000 on a D3X.

Having ISO 102,400 can be handy.
 
I don't use Paint Shop Pro, but any decent editing app should support RAW (or Nikon NEF as they call it). Basically it loads like a normal picture, but the raw data used to make the image is stored within the file, so you can actually adjust exposure etc. in software after you've taken the picture.

All my paintball pictures for example were much darker than before, I adjusted exposure after the fact.
 
This is where the Nikon D700 ISO comes handy. I did not have a fast lens at the time but still manage to freeze the action

ISO25,000! 1/650th sec, f5.2
_VNV2940.jpg

I have this problem as well but nvr try so high ISO on my D700...maybe still new to this toy.
I can take the picrure but the ball & human movement always "blur"
So U using in P/A/S/M mode?
 
I have never shot any in RAW. Is it complicated to work with? I have Paint Shop Pro 7 to work with. So not sure what I would even be doing. I am sure that there are other Raw discussions on this sight so if it is too complex to explain here, could you point me in the right direction?
Thanks again.
I really do apprectiate your answers.

No, shooting in RAW is not complicated at all. What you want to do, as others have said, is bump your ISO up to "hi", which is the equivlent of 3200.

To process the images, download and install "Raw Therapee" RawTherapee 3.0 alpha 1 and license changes Its an open source freeware image processor. Once you have the images loaded, you can apply noise reduction to the image... which works surpisingly well. Here is a youtube tutorial. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzTPAwm5IUo[/ame]
 
- Fast prime lens like 85mm f/1.8 maybe a good choice. (really not sure if your camera can autofocus with that lens or not since I do not use Nikon camera)
- Bump up the ISO is recommended. IIt is better to have a noisy picture than a blurry one.
- There are 3rd party noise reduction softwares out there, the software can help cleaning up your photos.
- If there is a important game you really want to get a better result, you may rent a lens just for that games as well.
 

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