I have attempted to take photos and had very littel success. the lighting in the hall needs a better quality piece of kit than I have particularly with regards to lighting.
Soooooo
Does anyone fancy bringing some good kit and taking a few photos that we can use for promotional purposes. You will then hereby decreed as the official Gymfest Photographer
I did find using an extra flash helped but the lighting in there odd, "Auto" setting doesn't work well.
It's the actual lighting within the gym that causes it, meaning the camera finds it very difficult to pick things out correctly. I've spoken to ET about it before, the way the camera works is different to the human eye so it picks it up differently.
It's something to do with the differences between phospoluminescent lights and daylight, the levels of UV and that kinda stuff, i'm not 100% sure on it as I've never looked into it fully... Sports halls basically have no natural light, everything is artificially lit from above from multiple angles, which f**ks up the sensors on the camera, and the lights are also a yellowish colour, rather than white, which causes the levels to screw up as well. It's why all the images are generally very poor contrast (either very much the same across everything in the image, which makes it look really odd, or complete opposites so detail isn't shown) and have an extremely yellow hue.
The best settings I've found so far are in manual mode, about a 1/50th exposure time, double-flash (Helps with keeping the background illuminated a bit more, so you don't end up with a pitch black/very low-lit background with a brightly lit subject. It's still not great but it's better than nothing), with an ISO level of around 200-400 and a manual focal distance (means adjusting it every time you move but does mean the pictures come out a lot better). The only downside is the longer exposure time does mean you end up with a little bit of motion blur. If you don't have manual settings I suggest High-ISO mode.
It kicks back images like this
Opposed to this
To give you an idea, I'm using a Kodak Easyshare Z1275, which is this little thing
here. It's not a DSLR, nor does it have a massive flash, but it's probably the best pocket-sized camera I've got my hands on. HD (720p) video, 12 Megapixels, complete customisability with shooting. Only failiure is it only has a 5x optical zoom.
Outside I've found ISO 60-100 with an exposure of 1/250th or 1/500th with no flash and auto focus works relatively well.