First meet of the year.

[Bookie]

Thanks for the comments guys.
This particular gym looks like it was built in the early '60s and there was a mix of sodium/merc and fluorescent lighting.
These girls are fun to photograph, they always have a smile on there face and are laughing and playing around.

I have done some work for the owner of the gym, made some lobby books and posters for display tables at children fairs and workshops, in turn he takes what i would have charged him out of my daughters tuition. Now he wants me to take pictures and sell them at our home meet in January. This meet is one of the largest gymnastic meets in in the state of Pa.. he already has almost 1000 girls registered. If I were to do this I would only be shooting one event either beam or floor. I've never done any thing like this before, so it is very over whelming, but at the same time very excited and honored. I'm kinda stuck on what to do, I would really love to do it but on the other hand, I don't want to look like a unprofessional fool. Any suggestions would be welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks, Greg

[Chris350]

If it's just the one meet I would suggest renting a D700 or something with really good low light (high ISO) capability. Mount the 70-200 on it. This will compliment your basic set up which will be the D7000 with the fastest wide you have. This will allow increased flexibility for a variety of shots without having to change lenses constantly and potentially miss shots. The better your lenses the better your end product will be. If you do choose to go with a two body set up, it helps to sync the camera clocks to keep things organize during ingest.

There are a couple good online rental services, Borrowlenses.com and Lensprotogo.com being two of them. I've used Lenspro and have nothing but positive things to say about the operation.

The best thing you can do is work that gym as hard as possible leading up to the event and take notes on what works and what doesn't. Then coordinate with promotor and governing body to arrange the most favorable set up you can get for the event you choose to shoot.

Discuss with the promoter and the governing body the possibility of remote strobes. These will help with the inconsistent lighting. Camera mounted strobes will probably be a non starter, but if you can get something rigged in above the apparatus it will make a huge difference. It will also take planning... In the long run I suspect you're going to be stuck with existing lighting.

[Bookie]

Thanks for the info. At USAG meets any kind of flash is prohibited, so the strobes are out. The ISO on the D7000 goes up to 6400 plus the h0.3, h0.7, h1.0, and h2.0.( i need to do some reading to find out how high those are). I try to shoot at the lowest ISO I can, maybe next time I will bump up to 5000. At this meet I had the 70-200 on the D7000, and the 18-105 on my D40. I have permission to go any where I like at this meet, and it is in a 2 y/o convention center with very good lighting. Last year I shot with the D40 and the 70-200 and they came out pretty good. (I put together a lot of excellent info that I read on this forum to use, You Guys Rock!)
Thanks again, Greg