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Sports Photography in an Indoor School Gym

My son just entered high school this school year (2023-2024). He has been super happy to be on the Junior Varsity volleyball team. And as a proud photographic father, of course, I want to be at all his games, shooting photos and videos.

In this article, I will document everything I learned while making picture memories of these games.

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Camera

Bring whatever camera you have on hand. Even a SmartPhone is better than nothing. If you have several, pick one similar to the camera I recommend below. Or if you need a reason to buy a new camera, you got it here. The following is my recommendation.

My camera choice is the Canon EOS Rebel T3i digital SLR (DSLR). This digital camera is very sophisticated for a consumer camera; it's got many professional level features. And with a wide array of Canon lenses--consumer and professional level--to support, you can use it for almost any situation.

The Canon T3i has a APS-C CMOS sensor which has a 1.6x magnification compared to a standard 35mm full-frame camera. The 1.6x magnification is very helpful getting closer to the action.

You can create videos with the Canon T3i. Therefore, it acts a video camera for you to capture the action. The camera supports 1080P HD resolution at 30 frames-per-second (FPS).

It also has a flip-out screen, that is very useful for making various angle shots. For example, you can get next to the court, put it down close to the floor and get a shot of the action from down below.

The Canon T3i is several generations old now. A good camera practically last forever (unless you use it professionally). You can find more recent versions of it on Amazon (see Related Links section below) and other retailers.

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Lens

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Monopod

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Exposure

I've been to several games now and a tournament. All of them occurred at various schools in our region. So I've been to several indoor high school gyms. Turns out the lighting at all the gyms are set-up the same. I have used the same exposure in manual mode at all the gyms and the exposure is perfect every time.

I use the Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX APO HSM zoom lens either handheld or on a monopod. And I never use flash, preferring existing light. The photography rule-of-thumb for sharp photographs is to use the same shutter speed as the focal length. That means I have to shoot at 1/200 of a second or higher. After metering the scene, I have found the perfect exposure setting is 1/250 of a second at f/2.8 aperture at ISO 1600 film speed.

Of course, you can keep the exposure the same by adjusting these three values. For example, with a 100mm f/5.6 lens, you can set the them to 1/125, f/5.6, ISO 1600. A thorough explanation of f-stop is too much for this article; please refer to online articles and photography books.

Let me know if the same exposure settings work for you. And whether you try it at other gyms of education level or commercial level.

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