Need a good camera for indoor sporting events ..

[ahmadka]

Hi all .. Well this is my first post here so please be gentle ... I'm in the market for buying a camera which I can take with me to WrestleMania in about 10 days, to take some good photos ..

Its going to be an indoor event in Georgia Dome, where I would be taking photos of relatively fast action .. pyrotechnics, fireworks, wrestlers jumping around, crowd movements, action happening ...

I will also be seated in a relatively back in the seating area so I would require a decent zoom too (I think 10x or higher zoom would be good) ...

Additional things which I think I need will be the ability to record 720p HD video at least, and HDR imaging capability ... I imagine HDR would be useful since the crowd area and the central lit-up ring area would be of two different brightness levels ..

My price point is about $350 .. Also, I would prefer to buy something from Amazon because their refund policy is very good .. I can return the camera for a full refund if I don't like it for any reason .. Anything which is eligible for Amazon Prime on Amazon's website fulfills this, even if the seller isn't directly Amazon itself (in this case it would say 'Fulfilled by Amazon' on the product page) ..

Here is an Amazon search which is customized to cater for some of the basic requirements I've mentioned above .. Anything seen within this search is okay by me:

Amazon search link

I personally like to stick with the Sony brand of equipment .. There's no logical reason for this other than I generally just like Sony ... I had narrowed down to DSC-HX5V which meets my criteria above, but still wanted to ask here on which camera is better ... I am completely okay about recommendations from other brands too .. I know some new Sony cameras are supposed to release soon (DSC-HX7V, 9V, etc ..), but they will be releasing after the Wrestlemania, and I need a camera now ..

So, what can you suggest ?

[Robusto]

I went to the the WrestleMania when it came to london and they were stopping anyone going in with any camera with more than 35mm lens . i had an argument with the door staff as i had a 70-300mm on my Olympus . i hade to change my lens to a 14-45 and they let me in . lucky i was seated out the way as when the lights went down i change the lens back to the 70-300

http://gallery.photographyreview.com...&ppuser=275306

http://gallery.photographyreview.com...&ppuser=275306

so if you get in you will need to bluff your camera past security

[ahmadka]

Can I maybe get a camera which is NOT an SLR (as they are outside my budget at this point) ?

Which camera (or cameras) are most recommendable from the Amazon search I stated above ? .. Worst come worst, I can just return the camera for a full refund if I'm not impressed with its results, so buying one right now doesn't hurt me in any case ...

[ahmadka]

I guess I would just like to get photos which are decent ... I'll give an example .. I had a DSC-W290 not too long ago, and I hated shooting pictures with it at nights because it simply messed up .. Too much noise, bad colors, bluriness, and all kinds of other problems ... Then I heard about Sony cameras with the Exmor R chip which somehow lets you take good/decent photos even in low light ...

Now, although having a DSLR with a 100 other variables to tweak may probably give you a significantly even better picture, I don't necessarily need that .. The Exmor R solution would work for me in this scenario, as the result is decent, it works, and is a satisfactory result ... The first thing with the Sony DSC-W290 simply wasn't good enough, and I didn't like that at all ...

The above is an example of what I mean by good or decent .. Its probably not the best, but its not the worst as well ... I just want to take pictures which I can later show to friends without them saying ... "Oh, thats a seriously crappy photo" ... I just want something decent, not something which may be considered as magazine-printable material, or something which is to be expected from a professional photographer ..

[Franglais]

"Please be gentle..." - how shall I say this - I don't think that you have any hope with today's technology. Let me explain why.

- Your wrestling pictures, pyrotechics etc. require a fast shutter speed to stop action - lets say 1/500s.
- The lighting at a wresting arena is fairly low. In order to get a correctly exposed image at 1/500s you might need 6400ISO and a lens aperture of f4.
- The 10x lens on a point-and-shoot has a maximum aperture of maybe f8 at longest focal length.
- The tiny sensor on a point-and-shoot can maybe be pushed to 3200 ISO but with lots of noise

Your 10x point-and-shoot will give you noisy images that are blurred because the shutter speed is not enough to freeze action (1/60s f8 at 3200ISO when you need 1/500s f4 6400 ISO).

If you want to get good results:

- get in the front row right next to the action. That way you can use a shorter focal length that has a wider aperture
- use a DSLR that goes to 6400 ISO
- fit a f1.8 prime or f2.8 pro zoom lens

I just posted a set of sports pictures with this setup in the Viewfinder forum

Afterthought: My little Canon S95 point-and-shoot has a candlelight feature that allows it to shoot at 12000 ISO but at only 2.5Mpix. I never tried it with sports. Might be a solution. Point-and-shoots will get there one day but I don't think it's just yet

[ahmadka]

So I got the Panasonic Lumix FZ35 yesterday .. Can somebody give me some links to tutorials/videos on how to take good photos with it for my case (distant moving targets in probably relatively low light) .. ? Like which mode is suitable for what and what parameters will I need to play around with, etc .. ? I don't know about things like shutter priority or aperture priorirty and stuff ..

But dont worry, I plan to fully utilize the 5 or so days I have before the event to teach myself as much as possible ..