My first try at Basketball. CC Please

So I just got my brand new 85mm 1.8 today and decided to try out my first BB game. The lighting is horrible in this gym. All shots were shot with 500SS f/2 ISO 3200. I set the white balance to florescent light.

It truely is a task trying to pan sports, I will keep practicing though. Please give me some CC on these.

Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Mike,

Your gear list and mine are so similar, and your results compared to my first attempts are also very similar. The 85 1.8 is a good lens, but it's tough to nail the focus at such small apertures. When I moved to flash and the 70-200 f/4.0, my results improved greatly. I was using a 40D back then. The 200mm makes better bokeh, and the flash helps on freezing the action and controlling the WB.

My partner shoots with a 7D, and I've tried it a few times. It can easily handle higher ISO, even without Noise Reduction.

If you can't use flash, I'd suggest upping your ISO to better expose the image in that gym. Looks like you could get 6400 ISO and f/4 and stay around 400SS. (Your images are just a bit underexposed) At 12,800 ISO, you could raise your SS and apply a little NR. Noise Ninja is what I use. It's inexpensive and works well. The 7D can handle the highest ISO with a little help from NR.

Other than that, as long as your using AI Servo and Center Point Focus, setting a Custom WB would be my only other shooting suggestion, at first glance.

Your crops on 1,3,4 are too loose. (Too much room at the tops) #2 is nice and tight, but cutting off the arms and missing the ball is not good.

Not bad at all for a first effort though, especially under tough conditions. Please take the critique as helpful and not harsh.

Regards,

John

I do not take it as harsh at all, I ask for it. This images are straight out of the camera, no cropping. I know what you mean though as I struggled with the framing during action, I think that will just get better with practice.

I am leary about using a flash..... Do you bounce it off of the ceiling to avoid the shadows? In our gym it is a white drop style ceiling. I do know what you mean about the underexposure.... I will definitly kick up the ISO next time and try and get the aperature a little higher.

My 70-200L lens will actually not be here until the 5th, I just updated my gear list early So I can try flash as well.

Get your flashes off camera. Search for Namasste on this forum and you'll find his old posts on lighting a gym with speedlights. He's the self proclaimed king of this stuff. He and Dennis taught me everything I know.

You can bounce your flash on camera. Here's a link to my first flash efforts. ( I was actually using an XTI then, not a 40D)

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=437011

Follow it along and you'll see the progression.

You're gonna love the 70-200. My 85 1.8 hasn't been out of the bag for basketball since I got mine.

What I had in mind is bouncing the 580EXII off of the ceiling while also using the built in bounce card to fill in the front a bit. Explain this two stops under ambient business....

Nice first effort! You have a nice selection of gear to work with. With just a couple of more bits you'll be able to get some really nice stuff! The bounce card will only cause you to have nasty shadows on the floor that you won't want. I tried that at practice one night. The boys practice Bball and I practice indoor sports photography. I had better results with bouncing the on camera speedlite straight up into the ceiling, but I agree with John, get the flash units off the camera. Get a set of wireless triggers (the RF-602s work really well and are pretty cheap) and then you're on your way to really taking some nice images.
I also use my 70-200 f4L with my speedlites strobing the BB court. That lens tracks and focuses the players so well! It's a little tight on a crop body, but shooting it from the corners gets you a different perspective which is nice sometimes. I just ordered myself a 24-70 f2.8L and I'm hoping that will be one of the last pieces I need to really start nailing down Bball photography. It doesn't get here until this coming Monday (I updated my Sig early too ) so it'll be missed for this Friday's game. Oh well, back to the 70-200 as well as the 10-24 for those cool wide shots! I want to mount that one at the top of the back board one time. Only the middle school kids just don't jump that high, yet.

Explaining the 2 stops under... Easy to do, tough to understand.

Set your camera to max sync speed for SS. (1/250) Aperture is wide open for whatever lens you have. ISO controls the exposure. Make the ambient exposure dark. ( 2 or 3 stops under the correct exposure ) So the ISO would be around 400-800 depending on the lighting in the gym. Your picture without flash should look dark. Barely able to make out a player on the court.

Then you turn on your flash, and set the flash power to properly expose the subject. Usually about 1/2 power will do when bouncing.

Your camera will try to take a blurry, dark picture at 1/250 SS, but it's too dark to matter about the SS. The flash will POP at the flash duration of 1/1000 while the shutter is open. Effectively giving you a 1/1000 SS and ISO 400 or so.

The shutter is open for 1/250, but only sees light for 1/1000. Get it? Frozen action at low ISO.

Dennis Wierzbicki has a cool podcast teaching us about this. You can find him in the link I gave you already.

Makes sense about the 2 stops under. Why couldnt you just use high speed sync with your flash to get the 1/1000 SS? Also can you use ETTL instead of setting the flash manually?

As far as speedlight placement it will have to be fixed to the camera. I will not get away with remote strobing at these games, they frown on flash a little bit. Another "professional" photog was at the game and was shooting on camera flash straight on. I did not like the results he was getting but he swears by them. Anyway the AD asked him to stop using his flash part way through the game......

Also John when using the technique that you describe is the background somewhat evenly lit? That is what I like to see in sports pictures is a well lit ambient background as well. Guess can't have everything all the time though...

43 North wrote in post #9497335
Makes sense about the 2 stops under. Why couldnt you just use high speed sync with your flash to get the 1/1000 SS? Also can you use ETTL instead of setting the flash manually?

Like John said, watch episode 3 of the podcast in my signature and you won't be "in the dark"

HSS is not intended for this type of shot. It lengthens the flash duration (bad), reduces the flash power (bad - unlikely you'll ever get 3 stops over ambient with HSS, which will result in ghosting, unless you turn all the lights off in the gym, in which case it's gonna be kinda hard to play the game) and drains your batteries faster (bad).

Oh, and FWIW, panning only works when your shutter speed is WAY slow, like 1/100s and you're not using flash or strobes (the duration of the flash will freeze the action, thus defeating the purpose of the panning). Concentrate on taking sharp pictures, framing the action correctly, exposing them right and timing the shots, all LONG before you worry about panning.

dmwierz wrote in post #9503686
Like John said, watch episode 3 of the podcast in my signature and you won't be "in the dark"

HSS is not intended for this type of shot. It lengthens the flash duration (bad), reduces the flash power (bad - unlikely you'll ever get 3 stops over ambient with HSS, which will result in ghosting, unless you turn all the lights off in the gym, in which case it's gonna be kinda hard to play the game) and drains your batteries faster (bad).

Oh, and FWIW, panning only works when your shutter speed is WAY slow, like 1/100s and you're not using flash or strobes (the duration of the flash will freeze the action, thus defeating the purpose of the panning). Concentrate on taking sharp pictures, framing the action correctly, exposing them right and timing the shots, all LONG before you worry about panning.

Nothing to really add to the post, but DENNIS! Welcome back! Have not seen you post for awhile!