Ping-Pong Woes (Speed, Aperature, flash?)

[carlthuringer]

I may be shooting a ping pong competition soon so I went to take some test shots of a pair playing to see what sort of pictures I got at different settings.

I ended up finding it nearly impossible to freeze the ball's motion at anything less than 1/200 shutter speed. 1/100 is fuzzy and 1/80 or 1/60 is quite blurry, turning the ball's motion (along with the players) into motion-blurred lines and sweeps. While the effect is nice, I really hoped to be able to freeze the action for some shots and get a really striking moment of time, such as the instant the ball hits the paddle.

The result at 1/200 was dismal. Very dark. A flash instantly alleviates it while at the same time flattening and washing out the scene. (not to mention causing the recieving player to fail to return the ball. *flash-blindness*)

I think the only solution is some seriously strong lighting... but maybe there's something else I can do? Or other suggestions for shot composition, dramatic moments, etc?

[Nicole]

Aperture, aperture, aperture. ;) If you're not going to blind them, and you need the fast shutter speed, increase your aperture as low as your camera can go (looks to be f/2.7). Combine that with bumping up the dreaded ISO speed to something you can deal with in NoiseNinja, and you should be able to hopefully get shots that are salvageable.

In addition, you can always try to lighten the shots up in post-processing if they are only kind of dark. Sometimes you're able to work wonders in post on a dark shot.

You're pretty spot on about needing that fast of a shutter speed for freezing the motion, and it might be possible to capture movement in the arm with lower shutter speeds, but it depends how much you want the action frozen. Not sure how much that helps or if I just rambled on a bit here ;)

[carlthuringer]

Thanks, Nicole. :) I'm glad I was on the right track, and I'll try shooting at 800 and 400 ISO to see what I can post process and what I can't.