Finally a topic on FR that I can speak with a lot of authority!
I am a professional sports photographer. It is all I do. No weddings, no portraits (other than sports photos) and nothing else. I’ve shot everything from little league stuff to National Basketball championships.
Really, this is ALL I do.
Shooting gymnastics is a skill that you will probably not be able to master. Here is why: The lighting, the action, the white balance, and the referees.
Referees/Floor people will not let you near the action. It is their job. It is primarly for the kids safety. Even when I am doing it, they keep us at a pretty fair distance, and I usually get the best seats in the house.
The lighting in most gyms is horrible. Unless she is a Divison I college athlete or world class, she is working out in a horribly lit gym for photos. That light is the problem.
The light is low. That means you need a very high ISO to get reasonable shutter speeds. Anything below 400 or 500th of a second is going to be marginal. You really need to get that shutter up pretty fast to get a good sharp photo. The ISO I am talking about starts at about 3200 and goes up to 5000 easy. You are not going to get good resolution with that kind ISO without a really good camera. In my world the Nikon D700 is a minimum useable camera. It goes for about $2500. The D7000 is actually pretty good and uses a lot of the same technology as a D3s believe it or not. For the weekend sports shooter it is pretty good.
The light color is important. The white balance in a gym goes from puke green to crazy blue. Again, being able to adjust the white balance is critical otherwise you will get lousy shots.
Forget on camera flash. Most gymnastic meets will not allow flash. AND, unless you can get right on top of the apparatus, your flash is not going to be strong enough. I have a carload of equipment that I lug around to light small college gyms. Your on camera flash is just not going to do it.
Final light issue: The low level light will cause your focus to not be able to lock onto the target. THAT is part of the problem you will have between pushing the shutter and getting the click. You can solve this by getting a good “fast” lens, which usually means a 2.8 or lower. I use a 50mm 1.4 for basketball sometimes when the light is especially bad.
One of the things that I always tell people in this digital age: Buy a decent camera body. But spend the big money on the glass. They are going to come out with a new camera next year that will be ten times better than the one you have. The lenses are really not going to change that much. The primary lens I use is a 300mm 2.8, and it is easily 15 years old. That lens has made half a million dollars over that 15 years. No kidding. Its paid for itself over a hundred times.
I see parents and grandparents on the sidelines every season. I try to help them get better shots, but the difference in equipment is so remarkable that it is just crazy. I tell folks I carry a small car with me when I shoot...three bodies and lenses that are just really outrageously expensive. But, you’ve seen my stuff on the web and in magazines. Its a tool like anything else.
So my recommendation is either a low end pro camera from Nikon or Canon. Or the highest level consumer camera from either. Go to KEH.com or BHPhotovideo.com for the best prices and selections for used and new respectively.
Go with either of them because you can expand on them, and use the lenses as you buy better cameras over the years. With Nikon lenses (I dont shoot Canon so I dont know the details of them) get a AF-S lens. It focuses fast enough to keep up with your action. SPEND money on the lens. If you cheap out with one of their packages (50-200 mm zoom) you will be able to take pictures of birds sitting still on a sunny day, but it will be useless in a gym.
If you want more info, or see any of my stuff just freepmail me and I will be happy to send you some links.
Great insights. The white balance issue makes me also want to add for others that if they haven’t tried an ExpoDisc
http://www.expoimaging.com/index.php
...then they haven’t found one of the best low cost tools for digital SLRs now available.
Excellent post. I was setting the bar higher than anyone on the thread, and I still had a nagging feeling that I was setting it to low. Your post confirmed my suspicions. I took some shots with the D3X at a skating rink, and I was just wowed by it. Low resolution for a pro camera, but faaaaast. I think I could get decent shots in a dark school gym with two guys holding bic lighters if I had one of those. I can’t talk enough about how amazed I was by this camera.