Shooting lessons from a volleyball game

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It is not as easy as it looks, no not the volleyball, the photography…

I had the honor of VIP front row seats on the court for Stanford women’s volleyball.  I have always loved volleyball, first as a player, then as a spectator.  I was a kid in a candy store !

What I did with the camera…

• First dial up the ISO to 2500 as only ambient lighting allowed
• Set the shutter speed priority mode and 1/400th sec
• Forgot to set color balance which caused some work in lightroom
• Set center focus, with AI Focus (continuous focus) mode
• Using a 70-200mm zoom which was perfect for the location, if next time I am farther back it will be the 100-400 zoom

Mental preparation… or what planning did I do in my head?:

• Recognized that the top tape of the net makes a nice diagonal and reference point for the photos
• Knowing in volleyball that the second hit typically goes to the setter in the center; this allowed me to start the trigger squeeze just as the ball was coming up after the set and get the pic of the hitter (or at least that was the idea)
• OOPS – I may not have brought enough compact flash cards (like even 1 spare).

Well that should do it.. Right?    Not hardly !  Out of 800 plus exposures there were only a few (maybe 20) that are nice.  Not very good odds!

Lessons from Volleyball These are not necessarily new lessons so much as a reminder for when I get complacent and full of myself.

1. I still need to keep learning.  And that learning at this stage takes the form of reviewing my photos and asking questions like “what works and what doesn’t work?”
2. It is not as easy as it looks.  All you have to do is keep the camera focus point on the ball!  Then the ball, and hopefully the person will be in focus.

   

   Missed focus

   What I found was that oops the focus point was next to the ball in the bleachers on the far side.

3. I need practice keeping the action in focus
4. It might help to use a monopod next time as my wrist is still sore
5. I bumped the camera settings and didn’t notice for 30 frames or so.  I set the exposure to 1/60 and all I have is a blur for those photos.  Need to check more often on the photo quality
6. Maybe if I can, shoot at a faster shutter speed
7. Consider upgrading my camera (many $$$$) to a newer version that has faster focus and more frames per second.
8. Make sure and set the white balance