Suggested Camera Settings?

I will be taking some "mugshots" of my local High School Fall sports teams in a few days. They will be taken inside of the High Schools Gym. After past trials, I always have huge issues trying to take photos in the poor/weird gym lighting, They always end up extremely noisy and/or the color is really off. So, what are some suggested settings (ISO, WB, etc.) to use to get better quality photos? Also, should flash be used?

Equipment that I have: Nikon D5200, Nikon SB-700 Speedlight, Nikon DX AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm 3.5-5.6G lens.

Take a friend to the gym a couple days ahead of the shoot, and shoot photos of them with different settings until you get what you like. Then use those settings on the day of the real shoot. No one here can know what the exact lighting conditions are in your gym, and therefore any advice would just be a guess. This way you also might actually learn something about your equipment.

There's no way to tell you the settings in advance, it's not possible to know how much light there will be.

Sure, use flash if the lighting in the gym is poor.

Have you ever heard of a white balance card or do you know how to set your white balance? If not, do some research on that (Your user manual should have a section on white balance). Yes you can use a flash, but you might want to bounce it off of something so you do not get too harsh a light. There are many tutorials on how to do off camera flash. I suggest you quickly learn the fundamentals of lighting, and try to get access to the gym to do some test shots beforehand.

Best wishes

You are not really equipped properly to do what you need to do.

Isn't there a smaller room where you can set up a background and take the mugshots there?

If there's, you can use the ceiling to bounce the flash to evenly illuminate your "mugs".

If you have to use the lighting in the gym, then you need to shoot in RAW and then correct the white balance when you process them in Lightroom. If you do use your flash, make sure that you set the white balance to flash.

Shooting in RAW is always the best because it gives you the most flexibility when you process your images.

Am I right in guessing that you do not have an Xrite Colorchecker Passport? It is what you would use when shooting under lighting that is mixed and difficult to accurately use the with balance presets in a camera

Am I also right that your school does not have any additional flash units you can use so you can setup actual portrait lighting (using a key and fill flash)?

And can we also assume that you do not have a photo instructor on staff at your school? That instructor would be the best resource to answer these questions.

Set the camera to " A " and 3.6 to see what you get.

There are simply too many unknown variables… How much light you'll have from overhead, the KIND of overhead light… You'd have to set the White Balance. Also, if you're considering using a flash, how high is the ceiling, is the ceiling white or some other off-color that might affect the flash light… How will the existing overhead light affect your flash… Etc

Go to the site a few days before and take along a couple of friends, check the White Balance so you'll know what to expect, take a few shots and see what adjudtments you need to make to achieve a good exposure.