Camera settings for basketball

I am just going as a fan and will be shooting from the stands for fun and was going to see if i could get any advice from all of you. I have a canon 5d mark II and a canon 40d camera and the 2 lenses i was thinking about using was the 70-200 2.8 IS and the 85mm 1.2 but i have some other lenses as well

Last time i shot AV mode for the most part. Here is a shot at the far end of the court

Thanks for any tips

Instead of Av, make the leap to M, especially for indoor arenas. Set the WB to a fixed Kelvin, anything close is fine. But a constant WB is easier IMHO to work with in PP than the various settings you'll get throughout the game from AWB. Shoot RAW and you'll get more to work with.

Neither the 5D2 or 40D have great AI Servo tracking. The 1.6x crop factor on the 40D will give you more effective reach since you're so far away from the action.

Your sample shot is a good start, but instead of 145mm, try to shoot tighter at 200mm. Try portrait orientation. Shooting tighter and vertical would've lessened the parts of your image on the sides that don't contribute to the action.

The 85/1.2 isn't great for fast action. And shooting at 1.2 would give you a really thin DoF. So stick to around f/2.8

thanks

Doemasters wrote in post #15295713
I am just going as a fan and will be shooting from the stands for fun and was going to see if i could get any advice from all of you. I have a canon 5d mark II and a canon 40d camera and the 2 lenses i was thinking about using was the 70-200 2.8 IS and the 85mm 1.2 but i have some other lenses as well

Last time i shot AV mode for the most part. Here is a shot at the far end of the court

Thanks for any tips

The most important "tip" is to get a light meter, learn how to use the meter to take incident readings, then start arriving early at basketball games to measure the light on the floor. If you truly want to have the most accurate camera settings, you begin with incident readings, and follow them by setting custom white balance.

DC Fan wrote in post #15296203
The most important "tip" is to get a light meter

I'm a fan of using my light meter with strobes, but not for ambient in a gym, especially as a fan in the seats. One more thing for the OP to buy and carry, one more reading to misinterpret, and one more unnecessary variable. Plus, I shoot with multiple bodies and each one exposes differently even when set to the same incident light levels from a meter.

Use the meter in your camera. The quickest way to set a manual exposure in a gym is to enable "Highlight Alert" on your LCD. Set to M, set your selected aperture and desired shutter speed. Chimp a couple of test shots and adjust ISO until you get a few "blinkies".

And IMHO a custom white balance is not necessary, especially when shooting RAW. Lights cycle, so a CWB isn't going to mitigate that anymore than picking a static Kelvin value (which is all that a Custom White Balance does) or the fluorescent or tungsten preset.

DC Fan wrote in post #15296203
The most important "tip" is to get a light meter, learn how to use the meter to take incident readings, then start arriving early at basketball games to measure the light on the floor. If you truly want to have the most accurate camera settings, you begin with incident readings, and follow them by setting custom white balance.

A practical example of how this combination of techniques work together at an actual basketball game a few hours earlier. The incident meter gave a reading of ISO 6400 and 1/500 at f/2.8. Because of the visiting team's dark uniforms,the setting was fudged a little when applied to the Canon 60D and Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and 1/400 was used to avoid underexposure. The home team's white uniforms were used just before tip-off to establish a custom white balance.

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DC Fan wrote in post #15297917
Any real examples from actual basketball games to how the impact of other techniques would be welcome, of course.

I'm not sure what that means, but here's one shot from tonight's game...

I'm with Clarence. For indoor sports when using a digital camera, a light meter is not needed.

I pick my aperture (wide open), shutter speed (1/800 if possible) and then I adjust the ISO until I'm on the verge of blinkies. After that I can shoot the whole game with one setting and not worry about exposure. I don't think a light meter would save me even 15 seconds in setup time.

Plus, after you shoot a while you usually wind up in the same gyms over and over. I have the light levels in the nearest 12 gyms memorized. That and they are all within 2/3 stop of each other.

Jeffrey, I swear it looks like your picture was in the same gym that I shot in last night...

Funny! The Vikings and the Hawks must have hired the same painter. That's quite a coincidence that they picked the same stripes.