shooting indoor sports ie. basketball

[Anonymous]

I have a Canon digital rebel xt and have been shooting lots of outdoor pics with moderate sucess and have enjoyed quite a bit. Now that winter is here I find myself wanting to take indoor pics of my kids playing basketball. My problem is lighting and set up for shooting inside. Im using the EFS 18-55 lens that came with the camera. with the pop up flash. all the pics are either a dingy yellow or if the light is good its very blurry (assume this is the apiture staying open on an action shot.) I’ve been to the digital rebel tutorial site looking for tips but most seem to be based on outdoor photography or portraits. Any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated.. As you can probably tell I am a newbie to serious photography but I really do enjoy it.

Thanks

[Encyclopedia Galactica]

I don’t personally have much experience with indoor sport photography, but a co-worker does lots of it. He has a ridiculou$ amount of ca$h tied up in his equipment, but he gets great results. The lenses he uses are like something off a spy satellite.

Examples at http://www.pbase.com/nikonsean

HTH

[sleeping]

Your built in flash probably isn’t powerful enough to do you any good unless you can get very close (10-15′). If you’re going to use flash you’ll need a more powerful external one.

Absent that, try turning the ISO setting up (as high as it will go if the results at that speed are acceptible) and use shutter priority with a speed high enough to stop the action – at least 1/200 or so.

A faster lens would definitely help too. I think Canon makes a cheap 50mm 1.8 prime. If you’re using an 18-55 right now and don’t feel you need something longer that might work.

Adam

[logomancer]

As for the dingy yellow color, a quick walk through the Photoshop Levels should take care of that. Rather than using the Auto feature, I recommend going through the R, G & B separately. You can then always hit Auto afterward and if you like your settings better, just hit Splat-X (on a mac, anyway) before you hit OK.

[Anonymous]

I was thinking that a faster lense was what i really needed to get those clear shots inside . I’ll take a look at the cannon 50 mm.

Thanks for the tips

[turbothy]

The Canon fixed 50mm lens got some very nice mentions on photo.net.

Also, your Digital Rebel is IIRC identical to what we in Europe call the EOS350D. If that is correct, you have a “sports” setting on the turn dial on top of the camera, intended to help capturing moving subjects while keeping focus. I suggest you have a look at that in the *gasp* manual 😉

[Author]

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