For as long as I can remember, I have found volleyball to be a difficult sport to photograph. I can attribute this to a few factors.
- I am not very familiar with the sport. It can be confusing to follow plays as they develop.
- Most of the gyms I shoot in are absolute dungeons. In one local gym, I am pushing it to shoot 1/125th sec at f/2.8 and 3200 ISO. My camera struggles to follow focus in such poor lighting conditions.
- I don’t always have access to good vantage points to get clean shots.
However, with anything else, I have improved with practice. Last night, I shot a match between Knightstown and Shenandoah high schools. It helped that the gym was relatively new with much brighter lights than other local gyms. I was shooting 1/250th at f/2.8 and 1600 ISO. That exposure is much more reasonable on my 1D Mark II.
Here are the two we ran in the paper.
Knightstown's Hannah Jackson sets the ball Thursday in a home meet against Shenandoah. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010
Shenandoah's Yardley Collett slams the ball past the block of Knightstown's Hannah Smith. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010