I came to seek advice when getting my kit and with excellent help came in €1 under my €600 budget and am now shooting with a Nikon D7000, have so far used a Nikon AF Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D IF-ED - Two Touch to shoot outdoor field sports and got results I’m really happy with. Also have Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D and Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR II, though I think they may not be relevant to my question now.
I plan on taking pictures of an indoor gymnastics show. I’ve been at it last year and expect a similar set up. I’ll be able to move around between acts but will need to pick a spot for each short section. Imagine you’re at a fairly dark circus and you want to take good photos, that’s pretty much where I’ll be.
Open to any suggestions on what I should be trying, settings-wise. Low exposure, otherwise I’ll end up with the subject blown out? Also, can anyone point me toward what would be a similar-ish setting for practice? Taking pictures outside at night? Or, I guess anyone to look at who particularly does lots of this type of thing, or discusses it usefully in a YouTube or anything? I can’t find much at the moment but I suspect that is to do with me not having a good photography type vocabulary to describe what I’m looking for. Over my first three outings so far for outdoor sports, I’ve made adjustments and improved, but this is a one day event, I won’t get an opportunity to look at the results and reflect on what to change before trying again.
Thanks for your time and any suggestions!
I shoot sports photography though mostly outside during the day but my process for selecting settings is I start with the shutter speed - I want it fast enough that I freeze the action - generally on a sunny day this is like 1/1000 but I can drop it down a fair bit if required.
Then I set my aperture which I start with what's going to get the best sharpness but then I also drop this down a bit if the light isn't good.
And lastly I just set my iso to auto. If the iso goes too high then I probably wouldn't have got a good shot anyway if my other settings were different, so you just try not to worry about it too much.
For indoor volleyball with ok lighting in gyms I would consistently use around 1/400 for decent freezing of action with reasonable iso on full frame with a 2.8 aperture. Slightly more if lighting allowed. 1/320 was pretty much minimum for any action shots.