How do you take pictures in a gym

[grhavenlth]

My daughter is in a Christmas Concert. She is doing a solo and I want to photograph her. Is there a general rule for photographying in a gym setting. I have a Canon Camera. -Sandy

[Krusty79]

This section if for people who want to describe how they took a certain shot, so maybe that's why you haven't received any responses. I don't have experience shooting in a gym, but I know you are going to have to play with your white balance settings until you find a setting that looks realistic.

[inkista]

Get a fast lens or a flash? (It really helps us if you tell us which camera body you're using and what lenses you have, which is why so many folks put this in their signature).

Generally, during performances, flashes are forbidden, so to get a shutter speed that's going to be fast enough to "freeze" the action, you typically either need to crank up your iso and/or open up the aperture of the lens to f/2.8 or wider.

To do the latter, you need a lens that actually opens to f/2.8 or wider, and the 18-55 kit lens isn't it. You may also need a lens with more reach. The ideal lens for this kind of thing is the EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM II, which is $2000, so rental may be a better option than buying.

If you want to purchase, but are on a budget, then the EF 85mm f/1.8 USM or the EF 100mm f/2 USM might be worth looking into. Both are around the $400 mark, have more reach than the 18-55 kit lens, while not as much as the 70-200, and they do the magic thing of opening up wider than f/2.8. Be aware, though, that neither one is stabilized, so you'll have a relatively narrow margin of shutter speeds (you want to be at 1/focal_length or faster; i.e., 1/85s or 1/100s) you can work with, unless you're stabilizing the camera with a monopod. And the wider aperture is going to make accurate focusing critical.

If you're on a really tight budget, there's the $100 EF 50mm f/1.8 II.

If you can't afford to buy or rent a fast lens, then cranking up the ISO, shooting RAW, and exposing properly (i.e., avoiding underexposure), and then using noise reduction software in post-processing may be the only way to go. The key thing here is to get a shutter speed that's fast enough not to result in motion blur either from camera shake or subject motion.