Section 2A Gymnastic Championships: Had a chance to shoot gymnastic championships this weekend. I had never shot gymnastics before and as a matter of fact had never even been to a...

coco1964 Loc: Winsted Mn

Had a chance to shoot gymnastic championships this weekend. I had never shot gymnastics before and as a matter of fact had never even been to a gymnastics meet before!! What a blast of non-stop action. I believe all were shot with a Nikon D7000 with a Nikon 50mm, 1.8s. I shot in shutter priority with the ss between 1/650 and 1/800. I did shoot some photos with a 70-200mm, 2.8 also but don't believe any of these were shot with that lens........

ivycreek Loc: North Dakota

Those shots are fantastic. I wish we had gymnastics in section 8.

tlbuljac Loc: Oklahoma

great action photos :thumbup:

krgatlgm Loc: Las Vegas, Nv

coco1964 wrote:

Had a chance to shoot gymnastic championships this weekend. I had never shot gymnastics before and as a matter of fact had never even been to a gymnastics meet before!! What a blast of non-stop action. I believe all were shot with a Nikon D7000 with a Nikon 50mm, 1.8s. I shot in shutter priority with the ss between 1/650 and 1/800. I did shoot some photos with a 70-200mm, 2.8 also but don't believe any of these were shot with that lens........

Thanks for sharing!! I never ceases to amaze me the strength and agility of these athletes!!!!!

Bmac Loc: Long Island, NY

I think you captured some fine actions shots under difficult shooting conditions. :thumbup:

coco1964 Loc: Winsted Mn

krgatlgm wrote:

quote=coco1964 Had a chance to shoot gymnastic ch... (show quote)

It truly is amazing because these girls are just tiny little things. I'm 5'8'' and most didn't even come up to my shoulder. Maybe that's why they fly around like little monkeys---just unbelievable!!

coco1964 Loc: Winsted Mn

Thank you all for looking and the kind comments---it was definitely one of my favorite shoots in a long time. I will be posting some more later on as I have about 800 shots to go through---the meet lasted 5 hours...........

ivycreek Loc: North Dakota

That's the fun part, going through the cornucopia of shots! Looking forward to to more of the shots! Do you get to go on to State and shoot too?

coco1964 Loc: Winsted Mn

ivycreek wrote:

That's the fun part, going through the cornucopia of shots! Looking forward to to more of the shots! Do you get to go on to State and shoot too?

I doubt it---will most likely be shooting basketball........

ivycreek Loc: North Dakota

coco1964 wrote:

ivycreek wrote:

That's the fun part, going through the cornucopia of shots! Looking forward to to more of the shots! Do you get to go on to State and shoot too?

I doubt it---will most likely be shooting basketball........

:-) that response brought a chuckle to me today!

raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

These are sharp which the speed you shot them at would suggest. I'm curious where your ISO landed on these. Normally the gyms aren't very well lit & even wide open, I end up with grainy shots if I try to shoot that fast. By the way, nice job!

coco1964 Loc: Winsted Mn

raymondh wrote:

These are sharp which the speed you shot them at would suggest. I'm curious where your ISO landed on these. Normally the gyms aren't very well lit & even wide open, I end up with grainy shots if I try to shoot that fast. By the way, nice job!

First thing I would ask is what type of camera are you shooting because an entry level camera isn't going to get these shots. I shot these with a Nikon D7000 which shoots very well in low light as well as keeping grain at a minimum. For the majority of these shots I used a 50mm, 1.8 lens and at times a 70-200mm, 2.8 lens but seldom since having a press pass I was able to get very close to the action. As the seating was arranged at this event I see very little chance of shooting these while in the audience, I also used a noise reduction program in PP. The shot of the Asian girl coming right at you was her last approach on the floor exercise before doing a final flip and I thought she was going to land in my lap but once I put the camera down I was a safe distance away. These are shots for the newspaper and I think if you tried to blow them up bigger than 5x7 or for sure 8x11 you would begin to see deterioration of the shot. BTW my ISO was between 1600 and 3200 while keeping a SS of 1/650s to 1/800s.............

ivycreek Loc: North Dakota

Coco do you shoot with your files size set to large or do you choose a smaller size so that it writes faster to the card?

I've been bouncing back and forth on this myself since most of the photos really don't need to be that big.

raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

coco1964 wrote:

quote=raymondh These are sharp which the speed yo... (show quote)

I've got a Canon 7D. I have decent glass - 50mm,1.4; 85mm, 1.8; 24-70L, 2,8; and 70-200 IS,2.8. I can get right next to the action at my grandsons b-ball games so I'm either using my primes or the 24-70. The difficult part is maintaining focus in the 6 year olds' 'scrum'. Wide open I can shoot fast enough but my target is rarely in focus. Stopping down a little, I get more in-focus shots, but lose a lot of those because of SS.
Thanks for your input!

coco1964 Loc: Winsted Mn

ivycreek wrote:

Coco do you shoot with your files size set to large or do you choose a smaller size so that it writes faster to the card?

I've been bouncing back and forth on this myself since most of the photos really don't need to be that big.

I shoot in large and am still able to shoot at 6 fps. When I send them to the paper I downsize to 800 kbs. From this meet I submitted about 80 shots I kept out of 800 and 5 made it into the paper. I may try making some into 8x11s this afternoon just to see how the IQ holds up at that size. My D7000 handles the large size ok...........