Any Tricks For Taking Pictures Inside a Gym For Volleyball Games?

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Smoke

Senior Member
My Daughter is on 2 different Volleyball teams and it is frustrating to try and get decent pictures of her for many reasons.

  • Fluorescent Lighting with high ceilings
  • I am not allowed to use flash
  • Players are running back and forth and most of the time interfering with my shot
  • Since its low light, a lot of the action shots I try are blurry
  • I am not allowed to be on the court so I am relying on my 300mm

Most pictures come out with the yellow look to them because of the fluorescent lights and they are a little dark. Does anyone have any tips for me to try and get some good shots of my Daughter?
 
K

Krs_2007

Senior Member
If it's in tact then it will come over when you upload to the gallery. Just make sure to follow the rules for posting pics so the dat doesn't get stripped off. You will need to resize so the pic is no larger than 1000 pixels on the long side.

if it does get stripped then just type in key things like camera, lens, ISO, aperture, shutter and you took it in RAW or JPEG. Also tell us what shooting mode, AUTO, shutter priority, aperture priority or Manual.

You have a lot more working room if you use RAW, but you can use JPEG as long as you know how to set the camera up right like making sure you set the white balance and such.
 
hark

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
If you are shooting jpegs, you can set your camera's White Balance to fluorescent. Software such as Photoshop Elements has 'filters' you can apply while editing photos to combat color changes from lighting--that should help with any photos you've already shot.

If you are using your 55-300mm lens, the widest aperture you can shoot at 300mm is f/5.6. What you will need to do is to raise your ISO which will allow you to use a faster shutter speed. A faster shutter speed will help alleviate blurring.

As was already asked, if you can upload a photo, maybe we can read your EXIF data from an existing photo. That will let us know exactly what settings you've been using. You definitely need a faster shutter speed though--and raising your ISO will allow your shutter speed to be faster.
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
That does sound frustrating. If a fast(er) lens can't be used, and flash is out of the question, sounds like you're going to have to crank up the ISO. Decent post-processing software, or in-camera reduction, can help deal with ISO noise if it proves to be an issue.

....
 
L

Lawrence

Senior Member
As well as above info I would suspect using a monopod would help as the 55-300mm will get heavier and heavier as the games progresses - although the use of high shutter speeds will offset this to a great degree, be sure to shoot at a minimum of 1/300th of a second (your maximum focal length of lens determines this "rule of thumb")
 
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gqtuazon

Gear Head
You'll need a fixed aperture lens. f5.6 on the long end of your zoom lens makes it difficult to take cleaner images without bumping the ISO high. 1/250 would be ideal for volleyball. D800E, Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 @112mm, 1/160, f2.8, ISO 2800
KHS VB 038 by gqtuazon, on Flickr
 
W

WayneF

Senior Member
Smoke said:
Most pictures come out with the yellow look to them because of the fluorescent lights and they are a little dark.
Click to expand...


Regarding White Balance, sounds like you just need a bit of editing experience. Today is a good day to start. :) There must be some white in the pictures, maybe the clothing of some players, or the while numbering on their uniform, or maybe some white on the volley ball itself, or maybe the white webbing on the net, or a white painted steel pole holding up the net. There is often some white somewhere in the picture.

If the white balance is off, there will be a color cast on that white (a white which ought to actually be white, but isn't). You probably have a White Balance tool with which you simply click on the white, which says "Computer, I know this should be white, make it be white". It will remove the color tint there, so that white appears white, and the entire image is corrected. This is basic stuff.

It should be rather white, not off white, but instead something that was desired to look white. There is some risk this found white is not precisely white, and it could come out slightly off, but that slightly off will likely be greatly better than grossly off like now. Odds are, it will be pretty good. Certainly worth a try. Try different white things, and different areas of white things.

However, if using JPG, do NOT click repeatedly on different things. Cancel out each time, back to the original, between each try. If Raw, you can click repeatedly on different things.

See White Balance Correction, with or without Raw for more detail.
 
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