First meet of the year.

[Bookie]

These are from my daughters first gymnastic meet of the season.
D7000 and Sigma 70-200 f2.8. 1/640sec. f2.8 ISO4000. Did some cropping and N/R with LR3. I set my setting but forgot to check my white balance, it was set on auto, and I think the white walls and brown bleachers were throwing things off. Some had an orange tint and others had a blue tint, had to fix that in LR also. Still learning, need to get in the habit of writing things down. My next step is to start shooting raw. Thanks for looking, comments welcome.
-Greg

[Old Timer]

Super for the first time out of the box this year. White balance can really be an issue in some of these poorly lighted venues. Try a custom next time and it could save you a lot of post process time. Your timing on these was spot on you got some great pics. Just think what you've got to look forward to in the years to come. I followed my daughter's basketball career all the way through college and now am taking pictures of the team she coaches. She treasures the pictures from years gone by and I'm sure your daughter will feel the same in the years to come.

[Chris350]

I can see a lot of odd light sources in there. I would guess everything from fluorescent and Sodium/Mercury Vapor overheads to regular incandescent. Old poorly lit gyms are a bear to get right. The good news is if you're already using lightroom, switching to RAW format is really fairly easy, nothing changes in your work flow really except you add the format and size in the export step. Making the WB adjustments and color balancing becomes easier.

[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