Lady Lions vs. Tri-County Titans

Here are a few from last night's home game. I'm happy to say that we won with a final score of 61-36.

Shot with the 20D and the 85mm/1.8. I must say, I'm having a time getting used to the razor sharp focus of this lens when shot wide open and am not getting many keepers. I suppose like anything else, I'll improve with time and practice. Comments/critique welcome, as I'm trying to improve.

#1 This one is going to the local newspaper.

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Liza - Nice color - you've got the indoor shooting nailed. Second shot looks a little bright, but that is a nit. I look forward to trying my hand it this... cheers.

Thanks, Mark. I just wish the keeper rate was a bit higher.
The second one is probably brighter than the rest due to my friend, Terry. He shoots with a D70 and 2.8 lens, so he has to use a flash. He illuminated a lot of my shots last night.

Nice shots

I just shot basketball for the first time last night, and it is quite fun to shoot!

Thanks. I enjoy it a great deal. It's hard on the knees since I shoot low, but it's a good time.

Enjoyed viewing your nice work

Thanks, John!

Guys,
One of the fellows on the FM sports board suggested I shoot in M (f/1.8 and 1/500), rather than wide open on Av at ISO 1600. The rationale is that this would make my exposure more consistent across the board. I'll probably try this at our game tomorrow evening. Any thoughts?

Awesome - the color is nice and warm , and the action frozen with expression of the players looks great

I know you'll lose some shutter, but you might want to stop down to around 2 or 2.2. That might help you get some more keepers, since 1.8 is just so paper thin. If you shoot RAW or RAW+jpg, you can underexpose a little bit to compensate for the loss in shutter speed, while not altering the ISO too much.

Firstly some nice shots there Liza...

As for setting your exposure manually, I would certainly agree with that approach. Assuming that the lighting is pretty even across the whole court (or at least the area that you are shooting in), then using a manual setting would provide consistent results and avoid the influence of bright/dark backgrounds and bright/dark uniforms.

To obtain your manual settings: You could take an incident reading with a handheld meter... or use a grey card... or repeat the settings you had for a well-exposed image when you were shooting semi-automatically... (or even use a trial and error approach chimping the histogram).

If there is a dark corner, then you can repeat the process for that area and tweak your exposure on the fly when the play is there.

I would avoid underexposing if at all possible. Even shooting in RAW you'll still introduce some unwanted noise.

Hope that helps a bit.

---- Gavin

Yeah, that's the hard part, but sometimes, you have to, if you want to get decent stop action. If she can keep it around ISO 800 though, she can make it out well enough with the 20D.

Yep... but the noise on the 20D is pretty well controlled even at high ISO. I'd rather have a well exposed image at ISO1600 than a deliberately underexposed one at ISO800. If the exposure is set manually then you can also be confident that the camera isn't going to provide an unexpectedly underexposed end result.

Each to their own though there are many ways to skin the same cat!

---- Gavin

Nice shots liza, I really like the expression in the second one.

Thanks for all the comments and advice. I didn't get to attend the girls' game last night due to illness (mine), but am gearing up for a very busy shooting schedule in December. There are 12 basketball games plus the Wabash Valley Classic, a four-day tournament in a neighboring city. We were consolation champs last year, so it will be interesting to see how we do this year. My coworkers told me that I missed a great game last night with a last minute three-pointer winning the game by a point in literally the last second. The girl in #2 above was the one who scored.

The lighting in our gym is bright, but it isn't even. Shooting wide open at ISO 1600 produced shutters that were all over the spectrum, from 1/320 to 1/800. I'm not really too worried about noise, as the 20D handles it admirably. I've considered stopping it down a bit, too, as that 1.8 is so darn sharp! I hope I don't sacrifice much background blur doing this. I'll probably "chimp" the histogram to keep an eye on it, even though my friend and fellow photographer, Terry, gives me a bunch of grief whenever I do it!

Thanks again for the comments and the great advice. I'm counting on putting it to good use next Thursday when the girls have their next home game!