I'm new here. Question about shutter speed

[melissa5704]

Hello everyone! I'm a beginner in digital photography and really struggling with the technical skills. I'm using a Nikon D300 and I was trying to take photos of my son's basketball practice in a gym that is really not well lit.

I know that if there is movement, shutter speed should be faster. I had my camera in Manual mode, increased my shutter speed but the photo came out black. Not sure what I'm doing wrong!

I found your site a couple of days ago and there are some very good hints here!

Any suggestions to make this situation work?
Thank you,
Melissa

[mjs1973]

Welcome to the site. Your exposure is not just determined by your shutterspeed. You also need to adjust your aperture, and your ISO. If you just increased your shutterspeed in manual mode, and nothing else, you are going to get darker images. If the gym is very dark, you may need to boost your ISO up to something like 1600, and set your lens aperture to wide open (smallest #) in order to get enough light to give you a fast enough shutterspeed to freeze the action.

Can you tell us what the shutterspeed, aperture and ISO were set at on your photos?

[melissa5704]

Thanks for the fast reply! Unfortunately, I deleted the black photos but I do have a very dark shot.

It was my son standing still.

Manual mode
shutter 1/250
ISO 400
aperture 5.3
WB auto
Just realized my exposure was set at -4.7:blush2: Could this be it? I was playing with all kinds of settings to see what would work

I was using my 70-200mm lens at 160mm

On a shot that the color was good, I had the following settings:

Manual mode
shutter 1/60
ISO 360
Aperture 4.2
exposure -2.0
WB flourescent 5
66mm with the 70-200mm lens

Can you tell me how to post pictures here?
Thanks so much

[freygr]

The lighting, f stop, and ISO (sensitivity of film/sensor) all are interrelated. The film has more leeway in exposure than digital. The D-300 has very good high ISO performance.

For indoor poor lighting you ISO needs to be high like 800 to 1600 and with a slow f4-6 lense you may even have to push the ISO to 3200. For action shoots you need to have the shutter speed about 1/500 second, so you need high ISO and small F stops.

[Old Timer]

Melissa go over to the Sports Forum and check out some of the threads there. This subject is discussed in great detail in several threads. You should be able to find all the information you need.

[Frog]

When you look through the viewfinder, you'll see a row of lights. When you set your shutter speed to faster they will light up to the right of zero if your aperture isn't open enough.
Try to adjust shutter speed and aperture to get to zero or close to it. If this cannot be achieved with the shutter speed desired, then start boosting the iso.

See also: http://www.nikondigitutor.com/eng/d300/index.shtml

[melissa5704]

Frog,
That tip helps a lot. I just posted a new thread and this "row of lights" was part of my question. I was adjusting exposure to try and get the lights at zero. Maybe that is part of my problem.

I sure feel like I know nothing! I wish I caught on easier!
Melissa