Basketball with a Tamron

I've got the ever popular canon 85 f1.8 which is primo for crappy lit indoor venues... but I also have a tamron f2.8 28 - 75 which I've used at the same crappy venues.

The wide end of this lens can give you some good shots under the basket. Especially in some of the places I shoot where the baseline is probably just a couple of feet from a padded wall.

I also have the sigma f1.4 30mm for the same type of shooting. It works pretty good when the AF works properly. I think I have a bad copy which I return next week. If I can understand that lens - then I think the tamron gets retired to the bag for non-sports shooting.

Anyway, both shots are with the Tamron at ISO 1600. A little cropping but no noise cleaning.

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You've captured some excellent action here -- the second shot is even better than excellent! You definitely did your part but I don't think your equipment was up to the task. They just don't have that pop and if they were mine it would break my heart.

I have the tamron as well - and have been less then satisfied with it indoors for sports. These images are easily enought "fixed", but it is so much less work when you don't have to. I have gone mostly with small prime lenses for indoor, which really solved the problem. The long term solution for me is to go with some strobes I am setting up so I can use deeper DOF with near subjects getting mulitple players in focus - from what I have seen and read that is between f4 and f5.6 for subjects that are less the 20 feet away. Anyway....

The timing on these two shots is excellent. I would crop the second much tighter - fix the color and do some subtle USM at the end if needed... I think you have a keeper with that one.

That second one is great! Love the look on his face.