The Basketball Thread!!! From Pee-Wee Leagues to the NBA... Post'em up and share!!!

You are Pro big time!!

To the issues with the A7 III for shooting sports... as I mentioned the focus is lighting fast, I think better than the 1Dx II. This gym has new LED lights, that helped a lot as the lighting is really even, so no issues with cycling. I also had anti-cycling turned on in camera as well. My biggest issue was not focus lock, but from time to time I would get shutter lag... and I think it is an issue with the MC-11 talking to the Sony. It was kinda like I would half press to acquire focus, it would lock, then full press to fire... and it was like the camera would go.. "umm... wait a second... and ok".... I may see if there is an update for the MC 11 firmware. I didn't try my metabones adaptors... next outing. But the shutter lag could be real problematic if I can't solve that issue. What is odd is the A6399 occasionally struggle to lock focus, but once it had, no shutter lag issues at all. It was cool to see the eye focus pop up all the time...

I shot both raw and jpg... this shot is jpg. it is ISO 10,000 - f4 at 1/800. It has been cropped about 25%. Not much else done. There is some noise present, particularly in the grey wall, but nothing that would prevent the image from being usable. Some noise still in the skin tones too. But what I like sharpness is still there... they've still go hairy legs... ; ) Haven't played with the raw version of this image yet, so it will be interesting to see if those issues can be cleaned up better than the jpeg engine did. But for being at ISO 10,000.. I'm pretty happy. It will take some getting used to to allow myself to shoot at ISOs that high.

The other thing I did notice was the increase in dynamic range... before the video on the score board was blown out... it pulled that detail back in. Other oddity is Lightroom says this was ISO 10,000... this site is reading it as 12,800. So take your pick. Not sure why the difference.

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As to something appearing to be blown out and then getting details back, then the JPG wasn't blown out to begin with. DR is all about the floor, the dark areas, not the highlights. If a pixel is blown out, there is no way to get the data back, its RGB values are 255,255,255 (clipped to white). If you reduce the brightness of such a pixel, you just get shades of gray. Rarely are pixels at an RGB of 0,0,0 (black), so again DR discussion and recovery is about the shadows and rarely about the highlights. It is much easier to clip highlights to white during exposures, and thus why you always meter and expose to push the bright parts of the image as close as you can to the right edge of the histogram without going through that right edge, and then deal with the shadows in post (which is where all our DR discussions come from).

If I condense the DR topic down to something more concise, you have about a 50x chance of blowing out parts of your scene, then you do to get pure black in your photos, so manage the right side of your exposures and then see what the camera has to offer for DR in the shadows when you recover those. Some cameras introduce electronically induced noise, even banding, at some point in the shadows, others do better, and that is where the DR advantages are found. Canon used to be very poor at this, and in the last 6 years, has made some big improvements and reduced the gap, while Sony still has a bit of a lead here.

Raw files may have a bit more headroom, and in cases where the JPG truly has blown out highlights, one can go back to the raw and see if the raw is also blown out. It may not be. Canon, for example, has about 1/2 stop or so of added headroom in the raw vs the JPG, I believe.

From my 5D4, ISO 32000, Raw->DPP->JPG, cropped, and no post processing other than a bit of leveling and USM

Not something I strive to shoot at, this was a mistake, I could have taken my shutter speed down for the free throw, and didn't. But it worked out.

IMAGE LINK: https://photos.smugmug​.com …69836/X4/FX8A92​05b-X4.jpg

Well... what ever then. Your shot is a well exposed shot, but in my world that is not a high dynamic range shot. There is no detail in the background, its all been reduced to black - what I call a la low key shot. Works great for portrait like shots. And it creates great subject isolation. It's a great look. But a high dynamic range shot would have preserved the detail lost in the background. Surely something was a back there. High contrast, yes. But high dynamic range.. not so much. Shows ISO performance very well though.

With my canon gear I could not capture the images on the play back screen, appeared as a giant white blob, without under exposing the shadows Never shot it with a 5D, but did with a 1 DXII. And that was ok, because they were not what I was after. I expose for the player, and deal with the rest. Now with the newer LED lights, the entire scene is more smooth... so that could be helping reduce the contrast between the two elements... but my former a600 nor my 1Dx couldn't keep both shadows and the screen at the same time. Again, didn't want to - not a priority.

To me DR is how many stops between the darkest elements and the lightest highlights you can caputure detail still... isn't just about the shadows, pulling in detail in the highlights as well. I want them both. Guess it depends on if you are shooting highlight biased or shadow biased. But highlights were still part of the DR conversation. Or maybe I misunderstood what you were relaying here.

Mine was camera jpeg - lightroom - crop - export ...

My target wf when I shoot for these guys will be to shoot two cards, JPEGs for them on card 2, raw for me on card 1. When game is done I just drop card off so I am done 5 minutes after last horn. Of the 691 I shot at this game, only 12 were out of focus... and those were mainly my fault for moving to new subject too fast. I've never had a hit rate that high. So trying to overcome the shutter lag issue. Other option is to dump rest of canon gear and go all Sony.. and I am still not ready to do that. 30 years of shooting Canon...its a tough breakup. Too emotional of a guy still.

EDIT: Just for clarity and sanity in my own mind, I wanted to make sure I wasn't off in the field somewhere on this.... the definition I found was

"Dynamic range in photography describes the ratio between the maximum and minimum measurable light intensities (white and black, respectively)."

Both ends of the spectrum.. not just the shadows. Just wanted to make sure were talking the same things here.

I know where you are coming from, I started shooting in '85 but did not get serious until '95. I know all about budgets, photography is my second income & my wife has medical issues and hasn't worked for 10 years. You can get quality gear for "little" money with a little research. The Nifty Fifty I mentioned is cheaper than the kit lens & much higher quality (IMHO). The Canon 85mm F/1.8 is an amazing lens & it is currently selling at B&H for $269!

I am just curious if you had tried shooting @ higher ISO with a faster shutter speed then used software to try and clean up the noise?

I've avoided it.... the cleaning up stuff because normally I don't have the time. And timeliines/deadlines are getting even shorter with the need to get stuff up in social media. Not saying I like it... but that's why I like the two card approach. They get what they need immediately and I still have RAWs should I have gotten lucky enough to grab a keeper shot. My stuff used to be used primarily in media guides... so I had forever. Now days... not so much.

As to the Nifty fifty... agree with you... but agree with you more on the 85 f1.8. If has been one of my favorite lenses for a dang long time, and works really well adapted on the Sony. The nifty fifty didn't play quit as well... but maybe the A7 III will do better. I would like it if it did.

I'm still working my way to being comfortable at super high ISOs.... looking to leverage it more though. Old habits are hard to break. I didn't trust JPEG for a long time.... but it is pretty good now days. So who knows.

I'm with you, sports is the only thing I DON'T shoot in RAW, for many reasons. Some NFL/college games I rattle off 2,500 shots between 3 cameras. This takes forever to download & slows down my culling process. Also, since I'm technically a "journalist", there is an expectation that I process my images as little as possible. I've known a few newspaper photogs that have gotten a "talking to" for too much manipulation of a photo(s).

Affordable cameras have gotten much better with noise. I've seen high ISO images taken with the 80D, for example, that completely blew my 7Ds away. Now you have the 90D which I would expect to be even better. I got so frustrated with noise that I gave up 5 FPS to get 2 new 6Ds rather than 2 new 7D II. I can't tell you how much I miss those FPS since I shoot sports. Oddly, however, my keeper rate has increased due to much less noise.

This is a difficult hobby, and a harder profession, due to the prices of everything. My solution might work for others. Every payday I purchase a gift card from B&H. Some paydays I can only get a $25 card, sometimes as much as $100. I throw these gift cards in a drawer until I am able to get what I want. Sometimes I get really lucky, and a camera or lens goes on sale real cheap because I newer model is coming out.

To show how far we've come... this is an image from the same gym but 13 years ago in 2006, Canon 20D, same lens... Noise was horrendous, ISO 1600, F4, 1/250 sec. But it was the best one could do with the gear at hand. I had another 1D back in the day, but were talking 4 mpx, and noise control was worse. You can see how uneven the lighting was then, versus now. It shot up to 6 fps, had a whopping 9 focus points, and could only format cards up to 8 gb. But was a huge step up from the 10D.... Today's entry level stuff is ever so much better...

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Today's FF 12800 is yesterday's APSC 1600.

Here is the M50 at 40mm (44mm FF equiv) using f/2 with the 24-70II, ISO 3200... Strangely this camera sharing its sensor with other bodies should be a bit cleaner, but this copy seems to be a bit noisier than even my old SL2 it replaced.

Some high school hoops!

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Last two

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Just remember... back to the other topic..... about shutter speed... the focal length you are using and the focal length dramatically impact the needed shutter speed needed. Use this tool to see the impact

https://www.cambridgei​ncolour.com …tter-speed.htm#calculator

Not like your going to use this live, but it does give you some ideas. For basketball wide angle lenses really help if you can get a location on the end line.

I always try to stop the motion of the players and have very, very fast shutter speeds, and rarely if ever venture south of 1/800th. Unless I am shooting a certain Jamaican sprinter in the 100m, I hardly ever have had a problem.

My average shutter speeds go from 1/1250 to 1/2000th for sports, unless I am up against a hard ISO stop, then I have no choice but to lower it.

Depending on focal length... your shooting faster than you need.... play with the calculator.

A couple of shots from out tournament this weekend.

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