Any 7D HS Basketball Shooter?

[jluspo]

Hello,

A good friend asked me to take pictures of his son's HS basketball game. I have a 7D and I'm planning to use my 70-200F4L but am afraid that the f4 is not fast enough. I don't think I will be allowed to use a flash. If I bump the ISO to 6400, do you think this lens is useable? Should I rent a 70-200F2.8? I can rent an 85f1.2L but it may not have enough reach.

I've never done indoor sports photography before but am actually excited to do it.

Thanks in advance for any help.
J

[40Dude6aedyk]

Just buy an 85 mm f/1.8 and use it.

[run53]

Just buy an 85 mm f/1.8 and use it.

Yep.... HS gyms have notoriously poor lighting (unless yours is different). I have never shot BB but I do a lot of HS gymnastics (no flash allowed). 4.0 will not even be close. 2.8 doesn't quite cut it (maybe it will at 6400).

Usually the best I can do in gymnastics is 2.0, 1600 and 1/400. I find that 3200 is just too noisy on my 40D. Maybe the 7D is better. So I suppose if you wanted to go to 3200, you could use the 2.8. But even then, you might want faster SS than 1/400 for BB.

[RCB]

You get pretty good ISO performance from a 7D so you can shoot higher than you could with some of the older cameras but without knowing the lighting in your gym I could not tell you if a f4 and 3200/6400 would cut it. I would venture to guess that it would not. With a 2.8 lens you have to shoot many times at 3200 and even 6400 to get proper exposure at 1/500. Remember that you need to shoot around 1/500+, 1/400 at worst, to freeze the action unless you want to get a bunch of jube, free throw, and walking the ball up the court action which is fine depending on your needs.

[RGolfJ]

just a quick note....the 85 1.2 might sound like a good idea, but it focuses way to slow. Stick with the 85 1.8. In my opinion, the 70-200 is the best option with the 7D if its ISO 6400 is as good as the Mark III.

[clarence]

I can rent an 85f1.2L but it may not have enough reach.

I've never done indoor sports photography before

Aside from focus speed (or lack thereof), the other disadvantage of f/1.2 is the razor thin depth of field.

Great for portraits and for turning distracting backgrounds into nice blur, but even when you nail focus, the rest of the player(s) will look out of focus.

I shoot ambient in gym light with 85/1.8 at 3200 and 70-200/2.8L at 6400. The 7D would do fine with either of those lenses.

[wjsp]

I use 7D for my boys BB in sports center and school gym players are 15 / 16years old so move quite fast I use the 7D on manual mode shutter speed 400- 500 ISO 3200 lens is 70-200 f2.8L or 24-70 f2.8lL. Also I use center point expanded seems to do the trick of getting more in focus shots. Do not worry if some pics are slightly under exposed especially if shooting in the area behind the basket. As you can make very quick exposure and brightness adjustments in light room or photo shop. I then run the pics I am keeping through neat image which costs around £20 for license and is a online down load this will wash a lot of the noise away and you are left with a very nice looking picture of your basketball players in action…. Hope this helps
P.S. before I got the L lenses I used 17-50 f2.8 sigma and this also produced nice pics after some PP on light room but you needed to be close to the action with that lens… :):)

[jluspo]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I've been wanting the 85 f1.8 so I will have to think about this more. Do you think it has enough reach if I manage to get a front row seat?

RGolfJ/Clarence: I've never used an 85 f1.2L so thanks for the heads up about the slow focus.

wjsp: If you can get decent shots with your 70-200 f2.8L at 3200ISO, do you think 6400ISO will be much worse? This way I can use my F4L lens and adjust the exposure in PS. I've never used "neat image." Maybe this can cleanup the pics so its useable.

Again, thank you for your responses.

[bboehm]

I've tried my f/4 lens with my 50d and it just isn't quick enough in the terrible gymnasium lighting. I've had to switch to my 50mm 1.2 which is obviously super fast but very limiting in the types of shots I can get.

[ChrisK10]

I just received my 7D and my 70-200 f2.8L IS this week. I shot my son's game anywhere from 3200-5000 ISO in Shutter Priority mode so I could keep a 1/500 ss. This was my first time shooting a game and using the 7D. I was impressed with how little noise there was in the picture. Besides cropping I ran the images through neat image to clean them up. Here are a few examples w/ the 2.8. The only examples I have shooting at an f4 is with my EOS XS at 1600ISO. It was not pretty.

#1
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2689/4154442878_a946d26832.jpg

#2
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2491/4154440232_4e07bb1108.jpg

I hope this helps.

[jluspo]

Hi Chris, great shots!

What fstop are you ending up with the 1/500 shutter? I think this is a good excuse to buy the 85 f1.8. I will still bring my 70-200 f4 and see how it performs at 6400 or even 12800 ISO.

[vipergts831]

Great Shots! What focus mode did you use?


I just received my 7D and my 70-200 f2.8L IS this week. I shot my son's game anywhere from 3200-5000 ISO in Shutter Priority mode so I could keep a 1/500 ss. This was my first time shooting a game and using the 7D. I was impressed with how little noise there was in the picture. Besides cropping I ran the images through neat image to clean them up. Here are a few examples w/ the 2.8. The only examples I have shooting at an f4 is with my EOS XS at 1600ISO. It was not pretty.

#1
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2689/4154442878_a946d26832.jpg

#2
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2491/4154440232_4e07bb1108.jpg

I hope this helps.

[Mike R]

+1 on the 85 f/1.8 I have used it for 2 seasons in a cave and it performs great. I have to shoot at
f/2.2 and an ISO of 1600. I was using a 40D but this coming season I'm using the 7D

[ChrisK10]

What fstop are you ending up with the 1/500 shutter?

I shot in shutter priority mode so the fstop generally stayed at 2.8.

What focus mode did you use?

I used zone focus with the entire center zone selected.

Thank you for the comments.

[vipergts831]

I shot in shutter priority mode so the fstop generally stayed at 2.8.



I used zone focus with the entire center zone selected.

Thank you for the comments.

Thanks for the info Chris. I asked because on the 15th of this month ill finally be able to purchase the 7D. Really excited about it.

[snyderman]

Here's the 85mm f/1.8 shot using a 30D, ISO 1600 at f/2.0 with shutter speed 1/640:

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a310/dsnyder160/WHS041_edited-1.jpg

anymore, I don't even pull out the 70-200 f/2.8. Especially now that I have the 50D. The noise would probably make the shots unuseable.

dave

[warrior6901]

The 85 1.8 will be hard to beat unless you go to strobes. I have had success in shooting the 7D indoors up to ISO 4000 with little noise. These could easily be printed up to 8 x 10 without noise reduction...IF your gym is lighting is close to poor, like the ones around here.

[ChrisK10]

I asked because on the 15th of this month ill finally be able to purchase the 7D. Really excited about it.


Yeah I am still excited about having the 7D. I have shot a few more game and am getting much more comfortable with the camera. I have not had an opportunity to go through the last two games (tournament games) but I shot tonights in manual and was able to shoot at 3200 ISO with a 1/500 or 1/640 ss at 2.8. The shots looked good on the LCD so I'm keeping fingers crossed.

Dave

I like the shot.

[Terry Healy]

Don't rule out renting one or more lenses to test drive before you buy. Find out what works for your body, venue, court access, etc. This is also an economical strategy when you are shooting a sport that is out of your normal repertoire - or a lens that is out of your price range. For example, I can't afford something like a 300 f/2.8 yet, but I might be able to swing renting one for 1 week to 10 days carefully chosen to get a bunch of soccer and football during a busy september week. I have had great experience with lensrentals.com, but there are others.

[Gary W.]

Hey all,

I just got the 7D and an 85 1.8 for the main purpose of shooting HS basketball. I moved up from the XSi and am looking forward to the lower noise at a higher ISO the 7D provides. That being said...

After doing some testing with 2.8 vs 1.8, it's no contest. go with the 85 1.8 for indoor sports. I tried the Canon 50 1.4 but the focus didn't seem quite as fast as the 85. Hope this helps.

Gary W.

[jluspo]

Hi All,

I just got the 85 f1.8 today. I've been drooling over this lens in the last year but decided to pull the trigger. Hopefully, I'll be able to shoot some BB in the next couple of weeks. Thanks all for pushing me over the edge into buying the lens.

Thanks,
J