Advice needed: shooting martial arts/indoor sports

dinneenp

Hi,

I'm going to be taking some photos for a martial arts exhibition night at the end of the month. There was a rehersal night last night and I took some photos, haven't had a chance to review them properly yet.

I have a 70-200 f2.8, 17-50 f2.8 and a 30mm 1.4 lens.

I shot mainly with the 17-50mm as I had to keep moving around the mats/ring. On the night there'll be big crowds etc so I probably won't be able to use the sports lens much.
I didn't use a flash, I have one (Pentax AF280T)but haven't learnt how to use it properly yet.
Ideally I should shooting at 1/200 sec or higher (correct?) but the camera wants faster than f2.8 then.
I increased my compensation exposure slightly and used as high ISO as is acceptable (Pentax K-7, which is great but not at high ISO.)
I have a tripod but didn't use it as I'm moving around a lot and getting many low level shots.

I have enought time to learn how to use my flash but it takes time to 'reload' between flashes so that's not ideal either.

Some questions:
If you have shot indoor sports/boxing/martial arts what lens & settings would you use?
What do you recommend for me?
I presume 30mm f1.4 wouldn't be ideal as I'd end up with both people not in focus. Or if I'm not shooting something very close does it still work like this at f1.4?
Anything else to note?
I'll post up some sample photos over the weekend.

Cheers,
pa

Ricky91t

High ISO, low aperture and no flash is what I'd say.

I did this earlier in the year, used my 20-40 f/2.8 with an ISO of 800 or 1600 to freeze the action, Noise is a nuisance but it's much better than a blurry photo(Unless you can get the blur to work with your photos, which is possible, but I feel people with no interest in photography prefer sharp images to artistically blurred ones.)

challengemaster

Screw noise, you can practically eliminate it these days anyway in Camera Raw afterwards anyway. If needs be, just underexpose and fix it later in post. You can't get everything right on camera, if you could, photoshop wouldn't exist

You can always bring back detail if it's underexposed, but once it's overexposed forget about it

dinneenp

dinneenp wrote: »

Ideally I should shooting at 1/200 sec or higher (correct?) but the camera wants faster than f2.8 then.

I'm not sure how bright or dark the place is, or how fast these guys are going to be moving, and I could be completely and totally wrong, but I'd imagine you'dget away with shooting at a slower shutter speed than that? 1/60 or 1/100 perhaps? (not with the telephoto, though, and especially not at 200mm, or you'll get motion blur from you shaking the lens).

dinneenp

Here's a few, they're all shot at f2.8. Ideally I'd be shooting at a slower f stop but I'd need a slower shutter speed then.
I guess that I can go with ISO 1600.
1.
Exposure 0.00556 sec (1/180)
F-Number f2.8
Focal Length 45 mm
Exposure Bias 0.5
ISO: 1600.
There's a bit of noise but I'd think it's acceptable for the common eye.



2.
Exposure 0.008 sec (1/125)
F-Number f2.8
Focal Length 30 mm
Exposure Bias 0.5
ISO: 800



3.
F-Number f2.8
Focal Length 17.01 mm
Exposure Bias 0.5
ISO 800


4.
Exposure 0.01111 sec (1/90)
F-Number f2.8
Focal Length 30 mm
ISO: 800




and just 2 non-action ones that I like:

Borderfox

Shutter speeds are quite low for indoor sports, minimum I start at is around 1/400th or 1/500th and use telephoto primes like a 50mm/85mm/135mm. I would try a lower viewpoint next time and a longer lens to throw the background out of focus.

dinneenp

shooting tonight so looking forward to it.
Will post up some shots over the weekend.
cheers for the tips