When it comes to digital photography, I tend to learn things the hard way. Case in point: Last week my daughter was invited to play soccer in an indoor arena. Given that it was yet another below freezing day in Wisconsin, I was only too happy to have a warm area in which to document my 5-year-old’s athletic prowess. Unfortunately, my photo prowess needed a lot of work, especially when shooting indoors.
The arena is a massive window-less structure, which is illuminated by huge florescent lights. Basically, it’s a photographer’s nightmare set-up, lighting-wise. Shooing indoor activities is a tricky proposition, mainly due to the fact that your eye sees your subject very differently than your camera does.
In my situation at the indoor soccer complex, I should have switched to manual mode and turned off my flash. I didn’t turn off my flash because the place didn’t have a single source of natural light. Still, in an indoor setting you should raise your ISO to 1000 or above (experiment until you find a level that works best for your shooting situation), turn on Auto White Balance, and open your aperture as wide as possible.
Another tip I should have followed was to make better use of my camera’s zoom. Employing your zoom will help flatten the photo. This is helpful if your subject is standing still. For example, if you are shooting a person giving a speech in a hotel ballroom or convention center, then it’s best to stand back a bit and zoom in, rather than position yourself directly in front of your photo subject.
In my case there was a lot of movement, so I needed to use a faster shutter speed (like 1/250th of a second) to avoid excessive blurring. Depending on the severity of your image’s fuzziness you could possibly correct it with Photoshop or other image editing software. Ditto for the lighting errors. If your indoor shots feature an orange tint, then try to compensate using post-production tools.
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