A local high school varsity game.

Great action shots. You did a wonderful job action the peak action on these. Volleyball is a little difficult for me, I don't know the game well and our local team is not the greatest and nice action like this is few and far between. Looks like you had some nice light at this venue, It's pretty dark where I shoot. What setting were you able to use on these? Keep up the great post, I love the variety of sports you are posting.

Thanks again. Volleyball can be a bit difficult at times and the dark gym doesn't make it any easier. I was shooting at ISO 1000 with aperture priority of 2.8, plus a half stop under exposed, which gave me a shutter speed of anywhere from 1/160 to 1/250. I know in the second shot you can't see her face but I was amazed at how high that girl gets. Oh, to be 18 again!

These are really great. Boy does she have a vertical jump!! You did a great job catching the action.

Thanks. I've been having a hard time shooting volleyball and am more pleased with these than what I've done before but I still want to improve on them. That girls really skies. She's about 6'2" anyway so she can really get up there.

Wow, you did a great job getting the action with these. I will be shooting a little middle school volleyball this year and hope I can get close to these. Nice color and skin tones.

Jim

Thanks. Nice of you to say.

Great job, Chris. Volleyball is tough to capture as it is very fast-paced. Not perfect, you don't see many faces, but its all at the peak of the action.

A friend of my wife's has asked me to contact her high school coach about shooting a couple of their volleyball games when our season winds down here.

I've actually never shot too much besides racing, so I don't know much of what to expect. Can you use a flash when shooting volleyball? Any particular vantage points to shoot from to yield best angles?

I think the best vantage point is the back corner of the court. This way you can shoot into the net and see the faces of the players looking at you. Well, hopefully, most of the time. I also doubt you can use on-board flash as you are going to be blasting it into the faces of players looking right at you. I'm sure some schools might allow it but I don't want to be the guy that gets chewed on as I blinded a player by shooting the flash off in a players eyes and cost their tream a point, or the game. If possible, see if you can put strobes up the the stands so they pop on a downward angle. Ask the school AD and see what they have to say. Thanks.

These are great actions shots and you did a fantastic job with the dreaded gymnasium. Your lighting looks great!

Great shots. I've recently switch to a Canon Rebel 30D with a 18-55MM 3.5 - 5.6 lens (came with it) and I've improved my shots from my old Cannon Powershot but I'm still not getting the OH WOW shots I'm looking for. I'm still new to photography but from what I've read, I'll need different lens to provide more light. I was thinking about getting a Canon 50MM f1.4. Would this give me what I want.

#1 this was a pretty well lit gym so it's better than most.

#2 also pretty good lighting.

#3 and #4 were taken at our home gym and the lighting is very bad.

Would the new lens help? What other changes to I need to make.

I love taking Volleyball pictures but I sure would like that WOW factor.

Image two is probably your best shot but it appears your white balance is a bit off as the photo appears too blue and thir faces are a bit hidden. Images 1, 2 & 4 are alright but your shutter speed isn't fast enough and your aren't filling the frame. In my opinion the 30D will work fine for you. However, the 18-55 3.5 - 5.6 lens will not cut it as it isn't fast enough and although a 50 1.4is fast enough, you'll never be able to get tight shots where you fill the frame. My receoomendation is if you really want to get good shots, get the Canon 70-200 2.8L lens. It's a bit on the pricey side at $1,400ish dollars but it is the workhorse of the sports shooter. It's fast at 2.8 and you can get some nice tight shots in sports like volleyball and basketball and still use it for field sports like football (if the action comes close to you) although adding a Canon 1.4 teleconverter can help. The other thing you can do is to watch whats going on without shooting, like warm-ups in volleyball. Who is the setter? Who are their spikers and who has a high kill percentage? Who digs the ball well? Watch them in practice and key on them during the game.

Thanks, I really appreciate the input. I'll read up about setting up my white balance, etc. to improve that portion of my shots. I understand what you're saying about the 50 1.4 not getting me in tight enough. I'll check into a used Canon 70-200 2.8 and see if I can get the price down. It would be wonderful to be able to get the great shorts. I'm pretty comfortable is the timing of volleyball photography (getting the ball in the shot) since my daughter has been playing for 6 years (she's the setter in the first picture) so I'm comfortable with the speed and movement. But I need to learn a lot about the camera mechanics. The shots that aren't tight abpve occurred because... if I zoom in more... there's not enough light and everythings a blur. So I stay further out and get a little better shot but I loose the power of the photograph. Is there a lens that you would recommend between the 50mm 1.4 and the 70-200 2.8L?

You could try the Canon 200 2.8L at $640 or the 135 2.0L at $870 but with a fixed focal length you loose the ability to zoom in and out. One thing yiou might want to try to gain a bit of extra shutter speed is to shoot in RAW, use an aperture priority of 2.8, but then set your exposure for one stop darker. This will generally give you a bit more speed and when you are doing your post processing workflow on your computer, use the Digitial Photo Professional software that came with your 30D to lighten the images the one stop you darkened them when you took them. I think it works better using this software package than Photoshop. Granted, it doesn't work for every image but I have found that the fast shutter speed has made the extra bit of workflow worth it.

Chris, thanks for the input. I'm checking into the different lens to see what will work best with my budget. My daughter has a match today so I can try using RAW along with your suggestions and see how it helps.

Thanks for the input, really appreciated.