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 The subject of how to get better pictures indoors is coming up more and more often on the finepix forums.

People complain that their camera isn't working or the picture's blurry or noisy or they just can't get a picture from their camera so it must be the camera's fault.

Perhaps inspired by other's achievements, or just feel like they should be able to do it, or the camera should cope on it's own, a lot of people come away disillusioned from the experience.

Well the sad truth is most cameras need help from the person taking the photo. It's not the camera's fault it's just that every photo you take is for a different reason. The camera has no awareness so doesn't know what it is you are taking. Just the amount of light there is and a set of internal instructions and telling it how to get an exposure to within the set parameters of what is considered normal. It does not know how much movement there is or how fast. It does not know whether movement is required within the image or not. It does not know how accurate it has reproduced a pixel of colour within that image.

It is purely a recording device.

Not sentient.

Can not tell bad from good.

The designers try to get things right but for which circumstances?

They can give you an automatic mode marked sport for instance but which sport?

Outside or inside ?

What type of lighting and how much of it ?

Will you be able to use flash?

Motor sport or boxing ?

Can the two sports use similar settings?

Now can you see the problems?

Any automated mode, no matter how good will fail without a bit ( or more ) of guidance.

Why do people poo hoo those type of automated settings?

Well, for one thing the reasons set out above.

For another, where is the scope to be creative?

The thing that most people at first find hard to get their head around ( That being the relationship of the old chestnut of Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO. ) will yet again be the way out of the situation. No getting away from it.

But how to start ?

Well, pick one of those three and see which of the other two need to be altered by how much to get the picture you need.

The first job is to just get a picture that looks a bit normal. So if you are indoors relying on artificial light the first thing is expose for the room. Take a picture on full auto if you want of the room only. Possibly of where the action is to take place if practical. Sometimes for things like boxing it's not that easy as lighting varies before, to during bouts, but most athletic and gymnastic places thankfully keep their lighting constant.

So you take a picture.

Next you need to read the exif. You may have to look at your manual to see how to do that for your camera.

If you don't have that facility don't give up just yet.

For those of you that can the next step is.

Take a look at the histogram too if you can. Most Fuji cameras do allow you to do that. Normally by pressing the +/- button when reviewing the picture. Make sure the histogram is not touching hard left or right. Ideally not touching either side at all.

Not the best example but it will do. The camera histogram will be just white on black for most people, though some will have the benefit of colour one's like above or three to four separate readouts. When shooting with high ISOs it's better for the histogram where possible to be more to the right than left. Left is shadows and dark and is where noise persists most when amplified. The warning triangle shows some of the image is too bright loosing detail in the highlights, but the dark side on the left is quite reasonable.

If you have something like that one you are at least near a good exposure but in the instance above the colour balance is a bit out being a little cool. ( blue looking ).

If you camera can't do that try Aperture priority zoomed out to get the widest aperture you can or if confident zoom a little. If it's still to the left too much adjust the ISO up in numbers until it looks similar to the example.

Look at the exif and see what the shutter speed is. If it's above 1/150s it may be worth waiting for some action if your zoom is less than 120mm.

If everything is OK then go on to the next step.

If it's not go back and try increasing the ISO a bit more and repeat until you achieve the histogram. If you don't have a histogram adjust the pictures until they look like the two below.

It won't be as accurate but will do.

 If you don't have a histogram view then just look and evaluate the picture. Now at normal view you can see I have good blacks and bright whites. You can also see I have a fair amount of blur in static objects as well as in the motion of the athletes. The whites are not uniform, they have light and darker areas and still give detail. This can be verified by zooming in on playback. With fencing and Judo I look for sowing detail in the white clothing in the brighter areas that have seams. At the moment though I'm looking at just getting clearer pictures within a reasonable exposure so I'll leave the fine tuning for later.

Now at this point I should say the full views are jpgs straight from camera to show how they would look if I loaded them straight onto the Internet but the closeups are cropped from RAW files to show the image at 100% with no processing. ( If you click on the linked picture, here they show smaller than 100% . ) These are the files I would work on for more detail to upload later.

Looking closer things look worse.

 No definition at all really. So looking at the exif on the camera what do I have?

f2.8 aperture. and I've accidentally stuck on + 0.67 EV from a previous shoot so I'll get rid of that straight away. It slows the shutter down and I dont' need it for brightness either because the camera selected ISO 1600. ( yours may not ). Though the image is blurry and a bit blown out and noisy the noise is close to the actual colours around it. The black is black the white is white at it's brightest and the faces don't have too many speckle variations in colour so I'll leave it at ISO 1600 and see what else there is.

The shutter speed is only 1/40s. I have taken out the + EV ( exposure compensation) so I'll take another picture and see if there is any difference.

 You can see I still have some blur going on in moving subjects but the static ones are sharp with no or little blur.

Time to check the exif again as the shutter speed must have gone up, but by how much?

Not much, as Ive accidentally made my aperture smaller as well. Must have turned a dial without realising it. Even so, lets look at the close up for differences between the two shots.

As well as being cleaner with less noise the effect has been to sharpen the detail due to less camera shake and motion blur. ( I should point out I shoot sport without image stabilisation switched on because it slows my focusing speeds, but you don't have to. ) The extra depth of field has give the background more detail too but it has stopped the shutter from speeding up. I didn't use full auto but aperture priority to get the basic exposure. But then I'm not starting from scratch and have a lens that allows this method to be reasonably accurate. Auto for most people will do fine and in the past with different equipment I would have started there.

Anyhow, at the moment it looks like ISO 1600 for this camera is working for noise ( not too bad ) but the small aperture is slowing the shutter too much.  Also I've missed the focusing and got the background. Probably because I'm focusing on the left fencer's foil and missed it as I've pressed the shutter.

At this point I normally decide for now to stick to the ISO that appears to be working and work on the other two values of shutter speed and Aperture. To do that I take the readings from that picture and copy them into the manual setting and take a few shots to to see if all is still well. Then I adjust one of the settings at a time by a lot or both settings by a little.

In this instance I think opening the aperture to f7.1 will give me more light to allow me to increase the shutter time to 1/100s.

Lets see what the result is.

 

 Overal it doesn't look too bad and the background has detail and little camera blur. The right athlete still has motion blur around the feet even when the epée tips seem quite motion free.

So lets view the exif data for that shot. f7.1: 1/100s @ ISO 1600 ) EV.

I should also say I'm using an average metering measurement (Pattern) as it has less effect if I hit an extreme white or black section of picture as I press my shutter. Another option would be to lock the metering but light even when it looks like it's evenly lit in a sports hall can have brighter and dimmer sections of floor space. Also there are no windows to influence changing light conditions. For now my metering is on auto but later when I'm happy with the basic setup I will change that to custom each time I change where I shoot from in the hall. If you are sitting in one spot in a crowd that may not be so important but may be worth trying. Normally when I'm in one seated position I don't bother.

In the closeup you can still see motion blur and some camera motion blur in the athletes hand and the time keeper's shirt graphics. Note in the white of the garments, because of the high amplification of the signal the whites are picking up reflected objects colours, like the carpet. If needed that can be desaturated in post production.

During this whole session I did not have any noise reduction on in camera or D-lighting as I prefer to to that post production. The jpgs therefore are no different than a straight shot from other cameras with similar settings and similar sensor / processor combinations. Flash at competitions is banned. Also to shoot even with a point and shoot you have to ask for and sign an intention of use form at reception at these big meetings if they allow it. You will have to give your address, phone number, name, and have proof of identity with you.  More and more meetings don't allow this and do checks at the entrances including handbags and coat pockets.

 Don't think you have to have the aperture wide open to get good results, but the wider your aperture can be ( the maximum apertures listed in your manual for wide and zoom end (( the smaller the numbers the better)) but it will help the auto focus before closing down to the selected aperture when you press your shutter button fully down to take the shot.

With things going reasonably well I adjust my focus spot to around the glove of the epée facing me so the focus spot is between the two fencers more and has a sharp focus area between foreground and background. The foil itself seems to be too thin and too fast to work as a focus area. I open up the aperture to around f5.6 and bring the shutter speed up to 1/200s. Take a white balance check and take more shots.

In the photo the hand movement seems to be better frozen and a better focus throughout.

Yup. Good foreground and background with seemingly sharp detail in the main area. A little colour noise creeping into the whites. The wall and floor colouring is very true to what's in the hall.

Lets look at the closeup for problems.

 

 Good detail with little motion or camera blur. I still don't have the vibration reduction system on despite the slow shutter speed. You may find it necessary. In fact you can almost read the lettering and logos on the fencing jacket.

Skin tones are not too bad on the main fencer and his watch detail if fairly good. I think I have a focus point I can now work with. The above shot is taken at 105mm.

I decide to get in closer with the same settings but this seems to increase motion blur.

This is only marginally closer at 70mm. Not sure if it's the getting closer or that the fencer is in mid flight carrying out a mid air lunge.

Lets check the detail.

The feet have a bit of blur and this was the worst I could find within the image so not bad. Detail is around the same so I'm getting away with being closer too.

Will just adjusting the shutter speed dull the image too much introducing much more noise? Time to keep an eye on the histogram as I speed the shutter only by 1/50s to 1/250s.

 On first inspection there is a little darkening of the image losing perhaps a bit of detail but getting up to 1/250s seems to have started to cure the blurring feet problem.

Wonder how the noise is doing?

The noise may be creeping in but I suspect it's just the white reflecting red from the carpet. The blobs of light are randomly spread around and seem even coloured. Should be easy to post process if need be. On the plus side fabrics have good texture and the wood still looks shiny and not too grainy. Staying at around 70mm for the shot above.

 I think if I speed up any more it will introduce even more colour noise as the image gets darker so if I want a faster shutter speed I will also have to open the aperture more or increase the ISO. As I have more aperture to play with I open it up to f4.5 as I don't want to have to lose too much detail of both combatants due to too narrow a depth of field.

Not that I need to worry too much judging from the people in the background of the images so far.

So I increase the shutter speed a little more to 1/320s and also open the aperture more to f4.5.

The motion seems completely under control but is the image sharp at the focus points and is the noise increasing?

 Background still seems to have good detail and the exposure looks reasonable.

Lets zoom in.

 

If anything the noise seems to be more under control than before and the union jack repeated logo down the sleeve seems sharp. No odd noise coming from the blacks and next to no blurring in the picture at all. Just right for post processing.

As the days of shooting progress I keep writing down settings of where and why I used them. Over the four day period

I get to refine focus points within the image so I can open up the aperture to obtain faster shutter speeds at lower ISOs.

Eventually settling on ISO 1000 at f 2.8 with a shutter speed averaging 1/1000s.

 The images at normal viewing sizes of around one third of the original need less processing for noise and decrease the work time before uploading. Also needs less effort in post processing to get a reasonable image.

As you can see the close ups still have some colour noise but not enough to warrant a dedicated plug in.

The version below has has post production added but I haven't cropped or straightened that image.

 

 

It sets a standard to try to keep to for the rest of the images.

The next time I try to shoot fencing my next target for improvement is subject isolation. I may also try upping the ISO to 3200

So rather than a straight tutorial I hope I've shown how I try to work out which bit to alter next when you have no extra equipment to help out and maybe only your eyesight to help you out. Though this was about fencing the general idea can be applied to any similar situation.

Don't think it ever ends there. I will keep experimenting and seeing if I can improve the images each time I get the chance.  I hope to do better next time no matter the indoor sport.

I also hope you get something out of my personal thought process.

Cameras vary and you may not be able to copy settings. Even if you can it may not work as where you shoot may be darker. The hall above is lit to 740 Lux for TV work so it's not the worst sports hall in Britain.

I hope you can adapt  the process for yourself if you feel like giving it a try though. Long as it is to explain and read, to do takes very little time. About half an hour of fiddling to getting working shots with no real huge problems. Pics you could upload with just maybe some resizing for viewing within an hour of two of starting.