what settings for indoor gymnastics

[rottibon]

I have a canon 5d and have just purchased a 135 f2 lens (astounded at the images that have come out of this lens).

I am shooting my daughter in a low lit gymnasium this weekend and was chasing advice for what camera settings to use. I will not have access onto the floor as I am a spectator.(Obviously no flash allowed)

Am I best off shooting with high iso at f2 in AV mode or do you have other suggestions.

I want to freeze all action, so will these settings provide me the fastest shutter speed, or do you suggest something else.
I would appreciate some feedback from some experienced indoor sports shooters.

Regards Mick

 

[Marcel Knaapen]

Am I best off shooting with high iso at f2 in AV mode or do you have
other suggestions.
I want to freeze all action, so will these settings provide me the
fastest shutter speed, or do you suggest something else.
I would appreciate some feedback from some experienced indoor sports
shooters.

I would use AV and choose the largest apeture possible to maintain the required DOF. For a single athlete F2 can be small enough. Set the ISO as high as needed to mainiain short shutter speed (try to keep it shorter than 1/200). Do not be afraid to use ISO H (3200) if shutter speed would drop to below 1/200. Motion blur is more disturbing than noise.

Also use AF servo

happy shooting!

 

[rottibon]

Thanks for your reply and advice, hopefully I can catch some half decent images.
Regarsd Mick

 

[Orka]

135mm on FF will probably force you to crop most shots.

may be it's worth trying to suggest the photos to the oraganizers prior the competition as a ticket to a place near a carpet. it worked for me several times.

anyway: F#2.0 all the time mainly in order to be able to maintain ISO as low as possible. your focusing should be very accurate, but if so ODF is big enough for me. shutter speed not less then 1/320-1/400 in jumps and othe quick moves. even at 1/400 some parts of the body will be blurred. i tried 1/200 that you were suggested above and find it fine for stady/quasy-steady shots, but not for dynamics.

lighting should not change nor in place nor in time, so i suggest manula F#2.0, shutter 1/400, ISO as lighting allows.

 

[Jason Chan59347]

I have some experience shooting NCAA gymnastics back in the film days, but this advice still applies to digital.

Do you know how close you can get to the athletes? I would advise getting as close as possible and capture facial expressions as clearly as you can. The face and eyes often convey a lot of emotion, particularly in sports.

Depending on where you are, 135mm might be great, but might not be wide enough as another poster has mentioned. I shot a floor routine with a 35-70mm @ f/2.8 (Nikon, film) at ISO 800-1600 and was happy with the results and framing. I also shot balance beam, parallel bars, rings, etc. with an 80-200 f/2.8, wide open in aperture priority. The toughest part is the lighting, which is usually not very bright. I'd definitely avoid flash as it's probably prohibited and also very distracting to the gymnasts.

Depending on how rigorous the action is, you'll want to shoot at 1/250th or higher to freeze action, but sometimes 1/60th or 1/125th is nice because you can freeze the face, but still capture a bit of arm/leg/body motion. This conveys motion better than just a super sharp/frozen subject. If you have to sit/stand farther back, the 135mm should do fine and do a great job isolating the gymnast from potentially distracting backgrounds.

Happy shooting!

 

[stoddard]

With low light gyms, don't be disappointed with a low keeper rate. I don't know how old your daughter is and how technical here routines are. Try to get parellel to the beam. It will be easier that way. I think with a 5d you will have to pre-focus alot. If you end up at around 250th try to concentrate on static positions. Also try to get split leaps and things like that at their apex, so the movement is at a minimum. Again don't expect miracles. I remember talking to one division I coach and he was happy with getting a couple of good shoots per athlete per year. You can go to pbase.com/stod45 and see some stuff I've done.

 

[mablacksv]

Mick,

I shoot a lot of gymnastics. You need 1/250 to 1/800 sec shutter speed depending on the level of your gymnast and the event. Floor and vault need the fastest shutter speeds. 1/250 can freeze a split leap or straddle on the beam if you catch the action at the peak, when the action has essentially stopped for a split second. 1/500 on the floor will not freeze the hand and foot movement of top level gymnasts. 1/400 or 1/500 is necesary to freeze the foot movement of even a beginning level gymnast doing a quick walk-over on the floor.

Of course, freezing the action is not always necesary, since motion blur can convey movement. However I sell photos to parents, and most of them have cameras and can get photos with motion blur, so that are always looking for crystal clear shots free of blur.

I always shoot in manual mode, wide open. I use ISO 1600 or 3200 (and now 6400 with the Mark III) to get the shutter speeds I need. The 135 f/2.0 is a superb lens for your application, although I use a 70-200 F/2.8 whenver the light allows. The lower you can get (sit on the floor) the higher leaps, tucks, vaults, etc. will look. If you can get close to the beam and shoot with a wider angle lens from low, the leaps and jumps will look even bigger. The downside is that you usually get the ceiling lights with this angle which can be distracting. I have shot beam with my 200mm f/1.8L + 1.4X (280mm f/2.5) to minimize a distracting background.

Before I started shooting professionally (which gives me access to the floor), I would photography my daughters meets. In most cases I could move around quite a bit to get close to the apparatus she was on.

My shooting/business partner is at the U.S. National Championships this week. Last year he went for the first time and was able to shoot at 1/800 sec at f/2.8 at ISO800. Man it must be nice to shoot in that kind of light!

A nice split leap on the beam from 2004 or 2005 with my first DSLR (a D70):
http://www.pbase.com/d70svrider/image/45445576/original

My daughter on bars last year (Mark II, 70-200 at f/2.8, ISO 1600):
http://www.pbase.com/d70svrider/image/56384723/original

A photo of my daughter with world champion Nastia Liukin at a gym camp I was shooting at a few weeks ago (Mark III, 24-70 f/2.8L using strobes):
http://www.pbase.com/d70svrider/image/83606465/original

Good shooting!

John

 

[millsart]

AV mode is going to be thrown off very easily by different colored backgrounds, colors of the uniforms and more.

Theres nothing worse than have a great shot coming off the vault, or maybe a wolf jump come out blurred because the camera metered off the black uniform and set a shutter two stops to slow. Or perhaps you had one of the overhead lights in your frame and that extra brightness threw off the metered and now your subject is toally underexped but the ceiling is well exposed.

Indoors the lighting is constant. Set the camera to manual mode and dial in the best exposure you can get to try to get at least 1/500 shutter speed. You'll get constant exposures then regardless of uniform color, mat color etc. Its just a weakness of reflective metering.

Usually you'd use an incident light meter to tell how much light is actually falling on the subject but since you've got the LCD screen, just shoot, take a look and adjust as needed.

Your be best served by prefocusing as well. In low light the AF system just can't track the fast movements of a gymnast.

The 5D while only 3FPS does have a pretty responsive shutter so it works pretty well simply timing your shots and getting one frame with peak action.

since you've seen the sport before no doubt, you'll have a much easier time timing your shots as you know how to anticipate the action.

last of all, consider shooting higher angles to keep the backgrounds cleaner. Even with a f2 lens, at the subject to camera distances you have, you won't get that much of a blurred background but instead lots of bodies on the other events. Try to frame it with the mat at the background and the subject really will stand out more

best of luck

 

[vdbulcke]

some from this year in Ghent Gymfinale 2007
exifs included











--
See you in Zweinstein

 

[john lumb]

I appreciate i am very slow in replying to this post, but I have been un well recently etc.

Gymnastics in all codes, aerobics, trampolining,artistic,rythmic etc are a complete pain in the £$%^ to v=capture. I am a British Gymnastics photog snd I have struggled for years to get hte front cover or the image used to advertise the event etc. DO NOT LOSE HEART. I am a coach and a father to a national level gymnast, I also provide images to magazines and papers that's what I do. No other Photog from a paper or Msg will get the image u do as they do not undersrtand the sport. I spend ages (why I don't know) helping reuters and ap photogs with the images for their editors. 70-200 f2.8 , 135 f2.0 or the 85 1.8 will do u need to know the sport or be very lucky

http://www.vibephotography.co.uk
http://www.pbase.com/jonjo
pbase supporter

Submit Photos to ShutterStock and make $$$!