Shooting basketball

[swmdrayfan]

Thinking of shooting a h.s. girls basketball game tomorrow night for drill. I'm using a D70, but unfortunately the best lens I have is a Nikkor 70-300mm/f4-5.6. I know I'm going to have to use a low shutter speed (400?), manual focus, high ISO (800?) and all that, but how should I set the wb? Should I go with the Automatic or Tungsten setting? Also thinking I should go in AP mode.
I could go with the kit lens, 18-70mm, but I don't think that would give me any really good shots. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[hesaias]

Depending on the lights they could be Metal Halide, which is kinda pale, pale yellow in pics, or High Pressure sodium which is way yellow.
Can you set the wb to a custom? If not, the incandescent(tungsten??) would prolly be best.

If you use a smaller lens, you can do some cropping to get your shots dialed in, that way you get a higher shutter speed.

[livin4lax09]

if you can, set up a bit back from directly under the hoop. I find that gives the best results. You get the most intense action if you go to the hard drives to net. I shot from the stands for a couple games and got maybe 5 good shots. When i shot from under the net, my good photos went up 10-fold. I wouldn't worry about the manual focus. manual focus is tough in sports, especially one that moves so quickly. You can try it, but I think unless you're focusing on one player the entire time, you'll have a much better change of getting sharp photos following the action if you're on AF. I don't know about your gym, but in mine I was lucky if I got 1/250 at ISO 1600 and f/4. If you're not sure on how to work your custom white balance, then try to read back through your manual and figure out. All gym lights are different, so its tough to judge what type of lights they are. If you haven't shot the gym before, what I recommend you doing is this... Get in there during practice or any free time tomorrow before the game, and take test shots. Find out where you can and can not set up. Figure out your WB. Find out how much light you'll have to work with. Figure all of this out so when it comes time for the game you won't miss half of it trying to fuss with your controls. Also, play around with manual settings. If you can't get them in time for the game, shooting on aperture priority is fine, thats what I did for a while. you will just once in a while get incorrectly exposed photos. can't really think of anything else right now, but if I do, I'll post it.

Oh yeah, if you're shooting at high ISO's, shoot in the largest possible file size, with highest resolution. It will help to minimize the noise. And don't underexpose with high ISOs then make the assumption you can just compensate in Photoshop. I made that mistake to get higher shutter speeds. When you lighten high ISO pics, the noise jumps right out at you.

[swmdrayfan]

Thanks guys.

[JSPhoto]

Your best bet, considering your lens is to get up above and shoot down which will give you the added bonus of the light reflecting off the floor which is better than shooting up towards the lights. Worse comes to worse you can use flash (not built in flash).

I'd shoot in Manual mode, 200 to 250 shutter 800+ on ISO, especially with that lens. It's basically like shooting night football for you.

WB - shoot something white from where you plan to shoot from and adjust your WB to give the best look and you should be ok unless you move, then redo the WB.

JS