Lens Extender

Volleyball Photography is Challenging

I find volleyball to be a very difficult sport to photograph.  Not only must you deal with the normal challenges of capturing action in poorly lit high school gyms.  But also you must face the challenges of capturing the action in a very tight playing space.  Beyond focusing on the kids serving (which is very easy to capture) my best advice is to the shoot early and shoot often.  Don't be afraid to take plenty of photos. Get out of the stands and get on the floor.  Get as close to the action as a referee will allow.  Always remember, faces are good; while backs are bad.

Try a Different Photographic Perspective for Your Sports Photography

Normally I like to take my sports photos at field or court level from as low of a perspective as possible.  I believe this low perspective makes the athlete appear larger, particularly photos of kids.  While photographing a volleyball tournament recently, I noticed an opportunity to capture the action from a perspective almost directly above the athletes.  So I tried it.  The photographs below are the result of taking advantage of that perspective.  

I must admit.  I like it. I found the higher perspective easier to isolate the intended athlete from other players.  And most importantly I found it easier to capture good action that also included faces an those necessary athletic facial expressions.

Volleyball Photography

I find volleyball to be a challenging sport to photograph.  There are the normal difficulties of poorly lit indoor facilities.  But, for me, tracking the action is a bit of a challenge.  Some of this is due to the vantage point I prefer utilizing for volleyball - which is sitting (yes sitting) at the center line on the opposite side of the referee.  This position allow me to capture dramatic shots. Yet it's also more challenging to follow the action.  A fast autofocus lens is a must. I use Nikon's 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens.  I also try to do a little predicting.  I take educated guesses about where the ball and player will meet.  

Although I'm still not comfortable with volleyball.  With more repetition and practice, will come more and better results.

 

Shoot Your Indoor Sports Using the RAW Setting

Gym lighting can wreak havoc on getting colors just right.  The automatic white balance setting of my Nikon D700 works very well for outdoor photography.  But for indoor photos (and action taken under stadium lights), the automatic white balance setting probably won't produce proper colors.  If you're not able to adjust your white balance manually before your photography session (see a post about how to do this here), make sure you set your camera's photo quality setting to RAW.  RAW will give you much more freedom to make color adjustment during post-processing.

The top photo below is the original RAW shot taken using the automatic white balance setting.  The bottom photo is the same RAW shot after a white balance temperature adjustment using Apple Aperture.

Don't Use AF-On for Volleyball

I'm not sure why, but I seem to get more in-focus volleyball action when I use the shutter release button for auto focus as opposed to the AF-On button and setting on my Nikon D700.  I previously posted that I only use the AF-On setting and button for my sports photography.  Well, I'm fairly sure now that for volleyball at least I get more in-focus shots using the shutter release button for auto-focus, exposure and releasing the shutter.

Auto ISO Isn't Always Necessary

I've posted previously that I use the Auto ISO setting on my Nikon D700 when shooting sports.  While shooting indoor sports, however, I'm not sure Auto ISO is always best (As a reminder, I normally use the Auto ISO setting when I manually set the shutter speed I want to achieve and an appropriate aperture setting (see post here).  On the Nikon D700, an ISO setting as high as 6400 still produces very acceptable photos with very little graininess.  Thus I allow the ISO to automatically adjust from a low of 200 to a high of 6400 to achieve proper exposure at the shutter speed and aperture that I manually set). 

With the past volleyball tournament I shot, I found that I got more properly exposed photos by shooting a few photos using the above Auto ISO technique.  After reviewing the ISO level automatically set by the camera with these photos, I manually set the ISO to that level at the shutter speed and aperture level previously set.  I'm not sure why I achieve more properly exposed photos this way.  My guess is that under some conditions the Auto ISO setting just isn't fast enough to attain a proper exposure all of the time.

A Question on High ISO Grain (Noise) in Sports Photos

Here's an actual email I received concerning the level of grain in volleyball pictures shot at 6400 ISO.

Email question:

I am fairly pleased with my photos from [the] volleyball tournament.  I am getting good stop action, but why are they so grainy?

I used my big lens (F4.0) and an ISO of 6400.

Any suggestions before we go to the next one?

Email answer:

The reason you have grain (or noise) is because you're shooting at 6400 ISO.  Of course the higher the ISO, the better you're able to stop the action with good shutter speeds (due to better light gathering capability at high ISO).  The downside is that high ISO increases the noise in your photos.  Some cameras have better high ISO noise performance than others.  All cameras introduce noise, however, as the ISO increases.  For me, it's much better to capture a grainy photos than no photo at all.  Here's one of my blog posts about this problem here:

http://www.lensextender.com/2009/11/camera-settings-for-night-sports-photography.html

To help solve this problem for me, I recently purchased a new Nikon body, the D700.  It's got really good high ISO performance (supposedly the Canon 7D is really good as well).  [This] attached volleyball shot was taken at ISO 6400 with my D700 and an f/2.8 lens.

You can also buy noise reduction software that works really well.  Sometimes I use Noise Ninja for this.

 

Indoor Volleyball in Poorly Lit Gyms

Over on Photo.net there's a really good discussion about capturing volleyball action in gyms where the lighting leaves a lot to be desired.  This discussion is probably useful for high school basketball as well.

Some Good Volleyball Photography Advice

From Taylor-pics.