heartlessone42 Loc: Central Florida

This is a photo I shot at a recent bout of my team playing against Jacksonville. We play inside an airplane hangar and the game was in the evening, so the lighting was pretty poor. All the shots I got are grainy due to the settings I used, but I'm not sure what settings I could change to get better shots next time. Advice?

(Download)

Dave_TX

Is ISO 12800 as high as your camera goes? The sensor has real nice noise performance at that ISO! If you shoot in RAW format you can play with the image in post and lighten up things like shadows on the close skaters. There is still a lot of detail in the shadows. You can also fix the white balance and do some denoising. JPEG does not leave you much room to work. Keep shooting and see how far you can stretch things. Obviously you need to keep the shutter speed up. 1/500th froze the close skater nicely. Can you sit any closer and use a shorter focal length and wider aperture?

Jay Pat Loc: Round Rock, Texas, USA

Have you tried shutter of 250 and ISO of 6400?
Or shutter of 125 and ISO of 3200?
Avoid "dark" areas of the track.
At some point, blurry hand/arms and legs are going to start showing up. Percentage of keepers will drop.

I'm used to seeing roller derby on tv with a ramped track and guardrails. This looks like it could get wild without them.

heartlessone42 Loc: Central Florida

My camera will go all the way up to 25,600 ISO, I had to do a little research to find that. I did shoot in RAW, but had to save the pictures in jpeg to my computer to get them to upload. I have the originals still, but I'm new to the whole photoshop thing, so I'm not sure what I'm doing with it.
I was sitting as close as possible for safety reasons. Believe me, sitting trackside instead of being on the track itself is not easy. We have another bout this weekend, and I'm looking forward to trying out the tips you guys have given me.

Dave_TX

How are you trying to move the files from your camera or card to your computer? Your camera most likely came from Nikon with some software that handles things like moving the files and performing at least rudimentary post processing. The camera should support plugging in a USB cable that lets you open the card on your computer's file system. Does your computer have an SD slot? If not, get a USB card reader. In any case, there is nothing magic about the image files that should prevent you from copying them over to a directory on your computer.

I understand what you are saying about it being hazardous to sit too close to the track. Even so, you will probably benefit from backing off on the focal length, thereby gaining back some aperture. I assume your lens is a zoom and it does not provide a constant aperture across its zoom range.

Try backing off on the shutter speed as Jay Pat suggested. Practice panning with the skaters as you shoot. You will find that their heads and torsos are crisp while their limbs start to blur. With practice, you may like the images because the blurring communicates the speed of the skaters. Skaters in the background (e.g. on the other side of the track) will be totally blurred so that the close skater you are tracking will be the focal point of the image. One other thing you can do is set your exposure by setting the camera in shutter priority mode on your desired speed and then metering off something neutral near you. If the floor is light grey concrete you could use that. Note the f number generated by the meter and switch to manual mode and set the aperture to that f number. You may need to move up or down a bit on the exposure once you set it in that manner depending on what you see in the camera display. Shooting RAW you have a couple of stops of range to work with. You can dial in the exposure that works for each venue with practice.

Each frame you shoot is very cheap so shoot a lot of frames and pay attention to what works and what doesn't. Have fun!

tusketwedge Loc: Nova Scotia Canada

What camera were you using. Didn't have much to work with but here's a 2 minute PP in Min bridge Raw.Did a white balance and boosted the exposure up a little and a little shapening.Might have pushed the sharpening a little to much as I only had 68 KB's to work with. Sorryu the wrong one came through and I deleted it.Will repost with new edition if you want to see it.

Dave_TX

Here is another hogger's post of a link about panning to catch action.
Give panning a shot. I think you will like what you see.

http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-183521-1.html