[Rich_S]

The various takes on white balance are interesting. My picture of Jack's layup (#21 - that's Jack) looked good to me. Then dms upped the contrast, and I can now see that the whites are looking yellow. That tells me the whites in my version were white because they were pale and faded, not because they were "white". Am I making sense?

I can also see that OldGeaser's whites really are whiter (this is starting to sound like a laundry detergent commercial). However, OG's colors are off. Jack's colors (in particular the "POTSDAM 21" on his jersey are getting really close to red, and in real life they are most definitely orange. Same goes for my daughter's (#14) uniform in OG's second photo - the stripes look really red, when they are orange.

Okay, yeah... I realize we're talking white balance and I'm looking at the oranges, but my version and dms' seem more "right" to my eye. Maybe I just don't get the whole white balance thing yet. Who knows? Maybe the uniforms are cruddy and really are that yellow color. LOL.

I won't post the photos, but I'm happy to report I got some horrible pictures of my other daughter, Edie (the 4th of 4 kids) tonight in her first middle-school indoor track meet. I was hand-holding (panning) the zoom at 210mm f4, shooting all the way across the field house, and the *ist D's metering had the shutter speed all the way down at 1/30th. Did I mention the pictures suck? They were, however able to present evidence that Edie ran completely away from the pack and won her first race by a huge margin. The pics might be fuzzy, off-color, and washed out, but they make the grandparents happy anyway. No sense discussing their photographic merits; I'm just braggin' on my kid.

Mrs_S just walked by and asked in passing if there was anything I could do to make those pictures less blurry. Maybe tomorrow's the day to ask for "permission" to buy a used K5.

[robgski]

Since I'm so late to the party, I can only second most of the other comments.

You do have a good eye, and one very important thing is that in each shot, I can immediately tell who was the main subject. Despite the fantastic work you see in Sports Illustraded, action photos should have the main subject clear and frozen by panning, if everyone and everything else is either blurred due to motion, or slightly out of focus due to your aperture, that's great, IMO. Having everyone on the court frozen like statues looks a bit surreal, and takes away from the dynamics of the settting.

FWIW, the K-5ii has been discontinued, and now costs less than $500, check our forum's retail partners, B&H, for example. I have a K-5, and I love it, it's got all the features I could ask for, as the next evolution in that line, the K-5ii is worth looking at.

I've used GIMP for PP, because free is good, it allows me to spend money on lenses and stuff , but Lightroom is my favorite RAW processing program, give it a try for $10 and 30 days.

[clackers]

Okay, yeah... I realize we're talking white balance and I'm looking at the oranges, but my version and dms' seem more "right" to my eye. Maybe I just don't get the whole white balance thing yet.

The WB you still haven't got right. White needs to be white (and exposure needs to be increased until it's not grey).

Then you can adjust the other colours' levels and saturation.

This should all be done on the RAW instead of the JPEG.

[severalsnakes]

The WB you still haven't got right. White needs to be white (and exposure needs to be increased until it's not grey).

Then you can adjust the other colours' levels and saturation.

This should all be done on the RAW instead of the JPEG.

Agreed. I feel like white balance cards would really help out. Get in the gymnasium, set your WB to some manual setting, NOT auto. Take a picture of your WB cards (usually one white, one neutral gray and one black). Fan them out so you can see them all. Shoot in RAW. When you get back to your computer to edit, use the photo of the WB cards to set the white balance - Lightroom has an eyedropper tool so you can select any neutral color so the program can remove any color cast. Apply that white balance to the rest of your images.

I'm not sure if the istD supports it, but my K30 lets me set the WB manually from the camera using the WB cards, or any other neutral color field.

Sorry if this is WAY too basic/vague!

[clackers]

And colours may never be truly accurate. Dark blue under yellow light ends up black and you would have to fake the colour in PP.

[Kerrowdown]

proper white balance

+1 on that, first of give 'em all a quick tweak in PP and then see where you want to go.

[jheu02]

Here's a couple pennies worth:

If shot in RAW, in PPing you should be able to designate WHATEVER white balance you want. Shot "indoors with auto WB", just change it to Tungsten light or whatever looks proper to you in PP. I wouldn't worry about uniform color...skin tones showing properly is what you want here... Then, you'll need to adjust the levels for a full histogram, which lets you set what should be pure white and pure black. There's many ways to do this, but that's what will clean up your uniform colors. Adjusting the contrast will give the photo some pop.

You are at the limits of that camera/lens combo for the type of shooting you're doing, but there are some other things you can do without spending lots of money (I'd say getting a more modern body will aid significantly though). Your Tokina is a slow zoom, so it's good you tried the M50/1.7. But you can get more out of the lens than you are. f/2.2-2.4 should be plenty sharp, while enabling you to isolate your subject and gain a little in shutter speed. Most pro shooters for sports will use a fairly open aperture for just that reason. Of course, they're using top dollar AF lenses, and you're trying with MF lenses. So...learn about hyperfocal lengths. You set the lens and then don't touch the focus. Ever hear the phrase "f/8 and be there"? There's also "catch-in-focus" (where the shutter won't fire unless the subject is in focus), but I'm not sure if the istD can do that.

Panning helps. So does rotating the camera into portrait mode vs shooting everything in landscape and then cropping to portrait, (leads to less noise since it effectively give you more megapixels for the frame in question). Finally, you might consider getting a 135/2.8, or maybe a 105/2.8. The 135 might be easier to find since it was such a popular focal length on film cameras (it might bring things a little too close in a gym setting though, hence the search for an 85 - 105). Since it's a prime, and everyone made them, you can find that "most" examples will be sharp enough even wide open. Spot or center weighted metering can also gain you a little fast shutter. Then, shoot, shoot and shoot some more. Lastly, as someone's already mentioned, converting to B/W using software and "filters" can brighten up the shot and make the grain look more appealing.

Not quite the same environment, but here's a couple taken with a Soligor 135/2.8 on a K20D at a night football game. IIRC, these were shot wide open and cropped to bring the action closer.

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[Scootatheschool1990]

If I asked what's wrong with this photo, I think the answer would be "everything". Hence the title of this thread.



The photo above was shot RAW, and rendered in Gimp with no processing. Here's another example, same setup, except shot in JPG.



I've been semi-serious about photography since the '80s, but haven't really gotten into DSLR photography beyond the "everything in auto" stage. Granted, I've trying to get by with budget gear, but I'm discouraged and dissatisfied with virtually everything I shoot. A lot of it is my kids' basketball games, but pretty much everything else looks like this too.

It seems I never have enough light, the camera's always maxed out on ISO, running the lens wide open (with resulting, unforgiving lack of DOF), slow shutter speeds at the ragged edge of hand-hold-ability, which blur the motion. Beyond being blurred and out-of-focus, the pictures just don't look "right"; dark, muted, grainy, dull. Like the gym is full of smoke. I can get better pics than this with my iPhone.

So, where to begin? Blame the photographer? Better body with 21st-century pixel count and IQ? Replace old glass with something modern? Sure, "replace everything" is the simple answer but it's not in the cards, financially. I need an incremental solution, one or two steps that will make the most improvement. Either that, or just chuck the whole kit in the river and buy a point-and-shoot. As it stands, I run the risk of having my kids graduate and not having a single decent picture of them; five years of these crappy pictures is enough.

The second one is amazing. The color is WAY OFF on both of them, but that's probably the lighting from the gym. It's hard to light a large area, and so schools usually have terrible lighting for photography. The color cycles through with the curling. So, nothing really you can do unless you have flash, then you can control the lighting and color yourself. Nice shot I really like the second image.