How To: Photograph in the Gym by Allison

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a basketball game, praying you can find a random camera setting that will help your blurriness problem? When I first started taking pictures in a gym, that was me! Because the lighting is so awful in a gym, here are a few tips I've learned throughout my journey of finding the perfect camera settings.

First of all, I usually set my camera on Manual mode for sports. If you feel more comfortable with shooting in Shutter Speed Priority mode (TV for Canon/S for Nikon) then that works as well!

You DO NOT want to have a shutter speed slower than 1/200. This is simply because of the rapid movement that happens in most sports in the gym.

Here's an example of what can happen when you have a shutter speed lower than 1/200. The ball is blurry, as well as the player's feet. This particular photo was taken at 1/160 with the ISO at 1600 and the exposure meter set to +2.

The photo on the top was taken at 1/320 and the one on the bottom was taken at 1/500 with the ISO at 5000 for both. As you can see, the players are completely in focus and their movement is stopped midair.

When your camera is on the right settings, the blurriness is nonexistent, and the lighting is great! Of course to get these kinds of shots, the photographer should stand to the side of the net, and keep their focus on the player. It is also important to set your AF Mode to AI Servo. This helps track the players as they move to make sure your photo is in focus. Another helpful tip is to evaluate the kind of lighting in your gym. This gym, for example, has fluorescent lighting. Even though the Auto White Balance (AWB) is great for most lighting, it does not do a great job balancing in fluorescent lighting. To fix this, I simply set my white balance to Fluorescent.

Finally, I would like to add that your image size should be set to RAW if you are taking professional quality photos. However, if you do this, make sure you have a version of Photoshop to edit and process them into JPEG format later. To add my own personal touch, I set these final two photos' Camera Profile to "Camera Faithful". While the difference between Adobe Standard and Camera Faithful are slight, I love the warmness that this profile brings to the photo. Also, I set a -17 vignette to sort of tie the entire photo together. I hope these tips help when you take pictures in a gym!

HAPPY PHOTOGRAPHING!!!

all photographs by Allison