Camera Labs

Please any advice on shooting in a indoor swimming pool environment (action shots) with a canon 550d, lens55-250,

Thanks in advance
Nina

Since you said action shots, I'd guess the shutters peed should be pretty high like 200 or faster to freeze the action. Experiment with the shutterspeed until you like it. The camera has a Tv mode where you can set the shutterspeed.

Getting a fast enough shutter speed can be really hard indoors without flash. If you can get closer, the lens is F4 @ 55mm as opposed to F5.6 @ 250mm. That would double the shutter speed right there. I don't know how much the built in flash could help, but it might at closer distances.

Try increasing the ISO , but watch out for noise if you boost it too high.

I've shot pictures at a night baseball game from Rosenblatt's nosebleed seats before with the same lens on a 1000D, so I know it 's possible, just not easy.

On the other hand, if the place is really well lit and shutterspeed is no problem, try stopping the apeture down 1 stop, you might get sharper results.

Other options would be to buy a faster lens or a flash gun.

That's a great help thanks, I'm still leaning and at college and have asked to help a local swimming club and really want to impress.

I have a smaller lens 18-55mm and think I can getting close poolside so I will try that first, I was going to use the florescent setting instead of a flash so I have a little more control over the settings, I think this is the right thing to do....... time will tell.

thanks again and fingers crossed!!

Try not to get wet.

Taking both lenses would be a good idea. Is your 18-55mm the IS version? I had that lens as well. I always thought it seemed a little sharper than my 55-250IS. But when shooting around 55mm, the 18-55's F5.6 max aperture allows only half the light compared to the 55-250's max of F4.

If possible, use RAW instead of JPEG (or use both) so you can adjust the white balance easier if the color doesn't turn out the way you expect. I'm not sure how much it'll affect your burst rate, so you might want to try a burst in JPEG versus RAW to see what's acceptable speed for you.

Check your first few shots to see how it looks. Zoom in. I've thought alot of photos looked sharp until I zoomed in. Some photos will look better than others, and the camera will display what settings were used. (If they look great, you may even want to switch manual mode with those settings.)

Your camera has multiple focus modes, like 1-shot and AI Servo. The AI Servo is supposed to track a target, but depending on the camera/lens/lighting/subject your mileage will vary. 1-shot is the default mode where it focuses once. I usually use only the center focus point with 1-shot because my camera will randomly pick which of my 9-points to use. In the end, you might even need to use manual focus, which can be hard to tell whats in focus through the viewfinder. If you know where the subject will be, you can prefocus in live view and then wait for the swimmer to pass that predetermined point.

Thanks I did get a little wet but thankfully my camera stayed dry

I had some real issues with the lighting it was very dark and no matter how hard I tried with most if not all the inbuilt WH functions nothing seemed to work quite right, I couldn't really use a flash as I didn't want to distract the swimmers so I muddled through changing everything I could think of.

I tried the auto sports setting in the vein hope that it would help but I didn't really like not being in control, I tried the TV and AV with a F5.6 on the 18-55mm lens and although I did get some pretty good shots a lot were very 'splashy' I was missing the real sharpness of the water, so I was very disappointed.
Your advice on the focus points is great I will take that onboard,

Back to the drawing board and practice, practice, practice I think, who knew it could be so hard