HS Basketball: action at the rim

[Methodical]

[Chelephotography]

This is great!

[Old Timer]

Super action shots at the rim! Very nice light what was your setup?

[Methodical]

Thanks. I am shooting ambient lighting with a 1D4 and 70-200II. The setting is f2.8, 1/800, ISO 2500, so the lighting is pretty decent. My next game I am going to only take the 135 f2 and be forced to work with it and see what I get. The gym is really tight and between people moving about and the cheerleaders occupying one side of the gym, I would not trust setting up any strobes.

[Old Timer]

Great light for a high School gym. Wish I could get those number in my gym. I'm usually forced to ISO 3200 or even 4000 depending on how many light are out on any given night. I can never go over 1/500 usually have to settle for 400 or even 320.

[mattb]

Super actions shots! Great work.

[Methodical]

Thanks again everyone. Oldtimer, I was quite surprised how well lit the gym is and very happy, too. I know they all won't be like this, but this HS is about 5 minutes from me so I'll be shooting more games there. I can't wait to try the 135 at f2

[Bob32]

Methodical,

You caught some good action here, my favorites being #1, #3, #6, and #8. The main shortcoming is that, according to my calibrated monitor, these images are somewhat under-exposed.

In reviewing the EXIF data I note that these were shot at 1/800, f/2.8, and ISO 2500. It looks like you use the same procedure I do in controlling the exposure by manually setting values for shutter speed, f-stop, and ISO.

One way to have obtained more exposure would have been to lower the shutter speed to 1/500. I have shot many basketball games and have seldom, if ever, found it necessary to shoot faster than 1/500, even when shooting college basketball games.

I’m a Nikon man and don’t know how high you can go with the ISO on your Canon before encountering problems, but increasing the ISO would be another avenue for increasing exposure.

When I visit a gym for the first time I set what I think will be adequate values for shutter speed, f-stop, and ISO. Then I take test shots while the players are warming up and tweak my settings according to what my histogram is telling me. At the beginning of the game I monitor the histogram closely and do any further tweaking that may be called for. That procedure has worked well for me in obtaining reliable exposures.

This is my first post to this forum. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it comes through OK.

Bob

[Methodical]

Thanks Bob that's good to know about shooting at 1/500 because I was not sure if I'd get motion blur. I thought of dropping the SS, too. I normally would be at ISO 3200. I will try that SS at the next game and see what I get.