You may have already noticed that when you’re outside on a sunny day using the Sports/Action mode to take pictures of your child playing soccer or your pet catching a Frisbee, that you get these great action images that are worthy of submission to Sports Illustrated Magazine.

But when you go inside and take photos of a basketball game with the same camera in the same “sports mode”, you get images that are only worthy of being erased before anyone else sees them.

The main ingredient that’s missing in the indoor photos is “light”. The light inside a gym during a basketball game is minimal just as it is during a football game or soccer game after the sun goes down. Most of your sports/action photographs will be taken in available light.

Flash isn’t always allowed and there’s also an effective range of your built-in flash (10 to 15 feet) that isn’t conducive to taking action shots from the stands. Taking a photograph of a moving subject without a flash under low light conditions can result in blurry pictures.

The problem lies in the way that exposure works; the lower the light, the slower the shutter speed that the camera needs to make a correct exposure. The slower the shudder speed, the more chance that the picture will be “blurry” because of camera movement or subject movement.

A – Aperture – The aperture is the hole inside the lens that allows light through. Aperture is measured in “f” numbers – a ratio of the diameter of the hole and the focal length of the lens. The size of this hole can be adjusted – a larger hole allows more light in, a smaller hole less. An important effect of this is the depth of field. A smaller hole produces a lot of depth of field. The reverse happens with a larger hole.

B – Blown Highlights – Blown highlights are areas of a photo that are so bright they are pure white.

C – Compact Flash (CF) memory card – A popular type of memory card. Used in digital photography to store images. The amount of memory per card varies. Popular memory capacities range from 256mb to 8GB. The larger capacity cards are really of use to professionals only.