Figure Skating Low Light Arena Camera Settings HELP!!!!

Vita Brevis

Senior Member
Hi everyone, I am finally trying to get out of AUTO on my d7100.
Biggest challenge is taking pix of daughter figure skating in low light arena often from high up and through glass.
I would love to customize one of the U1 or U2 buttons so that I can always make it work but figuring out how and what to set it to is killing me.
I have read, watched videos and everyone deals with one piece and not the other.
Also which lense would be better my 18-300 or 17-70 which I believe is faster? These are my best lenses.
I have figured out AF-C, Ch, jpeg only, and maybe use S setting? If this sounds kinda right how do I get all into U1?
Completely confused.
Any advice would be appreciated.
 

Bikerbrent

Senior Member
Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride.

I suspect you will end up using the 18-300 due to the longer reach. 70mm is a pretty short telephoto. What ISO are you using? Can you post some examples?
 

nickt

Senior Member
Welcome. U1-U2 saves pretty much everything regarding the current state of the camera. I would suggest you don't do this yet until you understand exactly what you need to make these pictures happen. Having too much saved can get confusing.
Object of the game is you need a shutter speed just fast enough to stop the action. This will vary depending on the action. Setting it too fast is a waste of light if things aren't moving too fast. Something faster than 1/focal length is a starting point. Lens will need be wide open due to low light. Auto iso will help you out here. I suggest either shutter priority with auto iso or manual mode with auto iso. Either way, you pick that minimum shutter speed that gets you by and the lens gets set wide open. Either shutter priority will open the lens wide open or in manual, just set it to your lowest aperture. Of these two ways, I would go with manual mode. Set the aperture to the lowest and play with the shutter speed to freeze the motion. Auto iso will rise up to make your choice of shutter and aperture give the right exposure. Others might suggest different modes. In the end its all the same, you just need to understand what needs to happen to make a correct exposure under these less than ideal conditions. Again... Lens wide open, shutter speed fast enough to stop the action and auto iso turned on so that iso can adjust itself and satisfy the exposure triangle. As iso gets higher, your images will show more noise. you can cap auto iso, but I would not do that yet. Experiment first. A noisy picture is better than no picture.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Hi everyone, I am finally trying to get out of AUTO on my d7100.
Biggest challenge is taking pix of daughter figure skating in low light arena often from high up and through glass.
I would love to customize one of the U1 or U2 buttons so that I can always make it work but figuring out how and what to set it to is killing me.
I have read, watched videos and everyone deals with one piece and not the other.
Also which lense would be better my 18-300 or 17-70 which I believe is faster? These are my best lenses.
I have figured out AF-C, Ch, jpeg only, and maybe use S setting? If this sounds kinda right how do I get all into U1?
Completely confused.
Any advice would be appreciated.
I think the best thing you could do would be to learn and really, thoroughly, understand the concept of the Exposure Triangle. The Exposure Triangle is composed of three principles: Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO and trying to get consistently good shots without understanding these core-concepts will result in nothing but frustration, I assure you. Photography really can't be boiled down to a series of "recipe cards" that you dial-in to get good results every time; it just doesn't work that way. Even if someone does come along and suggest some combination of settings the best you can hope for is hit-or-miss results and when you don't understand WHY you're missing, you can't fix it which will mean you've simply exchanged one frustration for another.

Here are a couple good tutorials to get you started:

Understanding Exposure

What is the Exposure Triangle?
.....
 

Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
Welcome! The number one thing to learn when getting off auto is the exposure triangle. Figure skating will provide you with some challenges.
 

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
Welcome to Nikonites.

You have quite a challenge on your hands. The biggest one being that the white ice is going to trick your exposure meter and if you follow the meter only you will end up with a lot of "underexposes" images. trying to process them makes this challenge even bigger.

The second challenge is to figure out what kind of light are there. Some sodium lights or fluorescents have what we call "flickering". This is a phenomena that is not perceived by the naked eye, but when using a fast shutter speed, you can fall through the crack as you could get just a part of an image with a VERY STRONG color cast that is very difficult to eliminate in post processing.

So, all this being said, I suggest you go out there and do a trial run. You could use the meter in spot mode and orient it at the white ice, then (using manual settings), over-expose by about one full stop. Then take you pictures and carefully go through the lot to find out if you can get a reasonable result there. Many times, the only good solution is to set-up multiple flashes and do this with flash. At first don't expect figure skating magazine quality, because if this is what you would like, you might be in a very expensive journey: Full frame camera, fast prime lenses, flash with controller, etc.

Good luck and feel free to show us the result of your trial runs because without anything to go with it would be very difficult for us to help you more.
 

Vita Brevis

Senior Member
Thank you for your reply it is greatly appreciated! I do like the zoom on my 300 but worry that I might get better results with a faster lense but am glad it sounds like an ok choice. I really am a novice despite owning the darn thing for several years. I am hoping to get some starter pointers on where to set the camera and understand I will need to play from there but the last time I tried to customize my info the camera just stopped working entirely -I obviously played with too many menus! I understand I need to adjust stuff just trying to get a head start.....I have tried to add a pix (it was in NEF? vs Jpeg) Good at catching movement but too dark. I have a little Leica D-Lux type 109 I travel with and I can change +1,+2 etc by turning a dial and I can see the change immediately on screen vs on Nikon. It is helping me understand how the changes impact photo but there feels like a lot of moving pieces with my Nikon.
 

Vita Brevis

Senior Member
This is very helpful! Just need to know what to save.....at least starting recommendations. Will it remember Ch and S even if on U1? Hope that makes sense.
 

Vita Brevis

Senior Member
Thank you for your advice. I don't actually know how to "overexpose" etc at this point. I likely sound really dumb. Also I am not allowed to use a flash as it can distract skaters. Trying to make what I have work, cannot imaging new camera and more lenses before I know what I am doing.
 

Vita Brevis

Senior Member
Working on learning the triangle, just confusing -darn camera has so many sub menus and options -. Hoping for some pre set tips and the can adjust from there.
 

carguy

Senior Member
Hi everyone, I am finally trying to get out of AUTO on my d7100.
Biggest challenge is taking pix of daughter figure skating in low light arena often from high up and through glass.
I would love to customize one of the U1 or U2 buttons so that I can always make it work but figuring out how and what to set it to is killing me.
I have read, watched videos and everyone deals with one piece and not the other.
Also which lense would be better my 18-300 or 17-70 which I believe is faster? These are my best lenses.
I have figured out AF-C, Ch, jpeg only, and maybe use S setting? If this sounds kinda right how do I get all into U1?
Completely confused.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Hi.


I shoot hockey at a couple of local ice arenas, most have notoriously poor lighting, however I'm fortunate where I shoot as they have nice lighting. Your settings may vary depending on the arena you are shooting at. I usually shoot my D7100 in Manual, Center weighted metering, Continuous Autofocus, Auto White Balance at 1/640, ISO 1600 and f2.8 (Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 VC lens). Before I bought that lens, I was using the Nikon 85mm f1.8G (need to use what you have :) )


you may struggle with that 18-300mm Nikon lens. Can you rent or borrow a 2.8 lens?


You posted JPEG above, I strongly suggest shooting this in RAW as you will likely need to perform some work on the image, especially if the lighting is poor.


Good advice about regarding the exposure triangle.






Sample with the settings and gear above with minor adjustments in Lightroom


MAHA District 3 Squirt B Finals by Joe Lopez, on Flickr
 
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