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Youth Wrestling Tournament
I have been struggling with shooting indoor sports for some time now.
Here are some of my older shots. Today I started out shooting with the flash but the batteries died. I went to plan B, no flash. I thought I had the camera in manual but it was in shutter priority :huh and the shutter was set to 200 from when I had the flash on. I wanted to try using a higher aperture but they ended up Shutter 1/200, aperture 1.8 ISO 640. I don't understand why I can't get at least part of this stuff down. In my regular life I'm a fairly competent person. :cry
Suggestions are always welcome.
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Here are some of my older shots. Today I started out shooting with the flash but the batteries died. I went to plan B, no flash. I thought I had the camera in manual but it was in shutter priority :huh and the shutter was set to 200 from when I had the flash on. I wanted to try using a higher aperture but they ended up Shutter 1/200, aperture 1.8 ISO 640. I don't understand why I can't get at least part of this stuff down. In my regular life I'm a fairly competent person. :cry
Suggestions are always welcome.
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Comments
I do a lot of indoor stuff (basketball and volleyball and high school theater... so far) and have gone so far as to write settings on my hands. For football, which starts during daylight and then goes to dark under the lights, I use both hands for notes and reminders of when to change what. I shoot all manual and there is just so much to remember. I can tell you that it's getting easier with time and more and more of the lingo is starting to make sense. Sort of.
Easiest solution: bounce the flash (seems to work in the gyms your are in so far) and bring extra batteries. Several extra batteries.
Shutter priority is going to give you a big aperture and eventually underexposure when the lens can't open up any more. Try aperture priority until you learn to shoot manual. Learn from the camera while it's shooting aperture priority. AP and lens on largest opening (smallest number).
ISO 640 is too slow for these gyms and existing light. You can do 800 or 1000 okay on the D90. 1600 will work, but will be noisy--but not too much that you couldn't remove most of it in post.
With the larger opening (smaller number) aperture, focus settings will become more important. What settings are you using for focus?
Number 6 is not in focus.
Sit down. Get as close as you are allowed. With a tight frame on the wrestlers and a larger aperture (small number), the background will be out of focus. Wrestling shots standing up give you mat glare and no faces.
Try that next outing (not too many wrestling matches left; pretty much now through May). Maybe try some of these settings at a practice if the coach will let you?
I think shooting in Aperture priority with the bounce flash is a great idea. I am sitting on the edge of the mat during the matches. I don't move around though. It is crowded and you are not allowed on the side of the mat with the scorers table so sometimes when they are on the other side I have to crop the images or they are too far away. I would like to get another lens, something like a 24-70 mm. I don't know that much about lenses so I'll have to look into it.
Next tournament is May 15. I'll see about shooting a practice, they usually don't let parents in the room but maybe they'll make an exception. Thanks again for your advice.
You have a 70-210, so you have mostly what you need for wrestling. Aren't you using that lens? You should be (and between 100 and 210 most of the time for wrestling).
If you got anything more lens wise for wrestling, it should be a 300 2.8 to reach the other side of the mat. But I don't think you would recoup that investment.
Aperture priority for flash with the bounce flash, fine. But if you do run out of batteries, I was talking about aperture priority for shooting withOUT the flash until you learn to shoot manual. For no flash, shoot at 2.8 ISO 800 to 1600.
With the flash, try different apertures until you get the balance you want between background (ambient) and foreground (flash) light.
Back to focus, what settings are you using?
I was asked to shoot my nephew's wrestling match on Saturday. I hope I can get close to the mat. If I remember the gym correctly it has decent light so I might be good there. I also shoot a D90 and I typically shoot in Manual. I have been shooting High School hockey and have learned to get usable photo's. Not great all the time but usable. I too will keep on practicing and learning what I can.
I've been using the 50mm - then I just crop the images that are a bit too far away. That could be part of the problem, I know when you crop like that you don't get great quality. I can't get the whole kids in the frame with the 70-210mm even at 70. These matches are crazy, they put 2 mats in the smaller gyms and 4 in the larger ones then they put tape down the middle and have 2 kids wrestling on each mat. So there can be 8 matches going on at the same time.There are hundreds of people there and almost no space to walk around. I slip under the caution tape and sit on the edge of the mat. I am literally on top of the mat, sometimes the kids actually wrestle into me.
It would be nice to use a lens that I can zoom in and out. If I brought the 70-210 I would only be able to get the far end of the mats. But right now I'm only really able to get the middle to near end so I guess it would be pretty much an even trade off. What do you think?
This is not my photo, it was taken by one of the dads with a point and shoot but it'll give you an idea of the venues.
I have the autofocus on AF-C for continuous autofocus, AF area mode - single point, (I've also tried Dynamic area I didn't think it made much difference) I have not tried 3D Tracking (11point). I have the Focus point wrap around set to No wrap.
That's about it.
Yes, I've shot many of these (and some where the mats are even divided into fourths). Use the 70-210. You don't always need to get the entire kids (full body) in the frame. You've seen that in your cropped images. Shoot from the point where the tape meets the mat and splits it into two parts. You'll find you will get the entire kids in with the lens between 70-100 many times. The 200 will work for across the mat often and for tighter face and hands shots at other times. You'll have to get used to losing a few more photos to focus issues when you shoot tighter, but the ones you keep will be that much better.
I'm really surprised that allow that many people on the mat edges. That certainly wouldn't be tolerated in this state. Not really safe.
Will cover focus in reply to our next post.
Dynamic area won't make that much difference on the flash stuff with a smaller (bigger number) aperture. It WILL on the non-flash stuff with a larger (smaller number) aperture. I would use it.
I don't know if the D90 can keep up with 3D tracking under low lights like that or not. The D300 certainly canNOT. The D700 does okay. The D3 rocks it.
Turn off D-Lighting (even if shooting RAW). Turn off VR on the lens.
Focus wrap is just when you are setting the point, do you want the camera to wrap to the other side when you reach the edge and keep pressing the button to go in that direction (you're pushing the button to change the focus point to the right and you reach the far right focus point; should the camera just ignore more pushes of the button to the right -OFF- or wrap to the far left point -ON- and begin moving to the right from there). I've found having this on fits my style well. Your mileage may vary.
The D90 is the least expensive I've read that the 3D tracking doesn't work so I've never tried it. I wish I had enough $ for the D3, maybe someday.
There is Active D-Lighting in the Shooting menu. I have that set to Auto. Then there is D-Lighting in the retouch menus. That is part of the in camera editing, which I never use. Are you saying to turn Active D-Lighting off or never use in camera D-Lighting as part of PP?
This might be a really dumb question but I'm not sure if my lenses have VR, I looked at both of them for some type of switch but I didn't see anything. I also looked through the camera menu for a setting with VR, I didn't see anything there either. Not sure about that one.
Thank you so much for taking the time to help me.
I'll bring the 70-210, I guess the other reason I don't like to bring it is that it is about a foot long, really heavy and I feel like a dork. People come up to me and ask me questions about photography.
It is nuts at these tournaments, many times the kids wrestle right into the spectators. It really is not safe.
Turn off Active D-Lighting for shooting.
VR will be a switch on the lens, so the lenses you are using don't have it. (so, it's off then