1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Which 70-200 lens do you have? If it is the f2.8 version, that is the lens you want for volleyball because unless the lighting is pro quality, you need a fast lens. The 100-400 maximum aperture is too narrow, especially at the telephoto end, for anything less than an extremely well illuminated gym and you aren't going to find that at the HS level except in a very few large private schools.
I have shot a variety of sports and to me, volleyball is the most difficult to get good shots because you are combining poor indoor lighting with a very fast and largely unpredictable sport.
I shoot in manual mode with the aperture wide open and shutter speed of either 1/640 or 1/800 depending upon the level of available light. I generally set ISO to auto because most gyms have a fair amount of light variance across the area in which volleyball is played but you can check exposure ahead of the match/during warmup and if the lighting is even then fix ISO at the proper level.
You want to always shoot in RAW, not JPG, so that you can do more cleanup in post. Set AF to servo and I like to use a single point for volleyball which provides for faster focus acquisition even when using my 1DX series bodies. Don't rely too much upon your camera's burst mode. Volleyball is a timing sport to photograph and most of my better photos from volleyball are a single image capture rather than a burst. I leave the bodies in high speed mode but typically I only trigger a single capture.
If the light level is low, you will have to either live with higher ISO and its somewhat increased noise and loss of detail OR drop the shutter speed lower which makes blur much more likely. Noise can be addressed in post-process, blur is forever once captured so I gravitate towards faster shutter speed. You will almost always want your lens wide open (lowest aperture number). The exception is to quickly drop the shutter speed and decrease the aperture for more depth of field for a celebration shot where you want to capture a group.
This is from one of the better illuminated HS gyms in the area, on that part of the court with a f2.8 aperture and 1/640 shutter speed the camera selected ISO 5000 to complete the exposure triangle. There is one really dark gym where I use 200 f2 and 85 f1.8 primes for volleyball but fortunately most aren't that dark.
And on edit: while you are increasing your experience with Vball, one of the easier shots to nail is the serve so practice getting some good shots of the players serving. The second photos is pretty typical of this easy capture.
Rodger
Hmm, doesn't sound like you are truly retired does it? I taught tool and die for 5 years after I "officially" retired. Somehow it did not feel like retirement. They talked me into coming back because they were lax in replacing several of us that retired together.
I am not quite ready to just sit in a rocking chair yet 🙂
I was on the sidelines for the most exciting fourth quarter of HS football I have ever seen last night with an incredible come from behind victory built upon a trick play followed by a beautiful touchdown pass as time expired. I couldn't think of a better way to spend an early Fall Friday evening.
Rodger
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