I've never had a chance to shoot basketball before and I'm fortunate that it was our local team who are currently number four in the UK so not a bad place to start!!!

We were taking our church youth group to the game and so I was really cheeky and got in touch with the teams photographer to see if I could get court side and she was very kind and I managed to have the 2nd and 4th quarter there.... nice!

I found that if I was actually on the floor I kept getting blocked by the ref and also the coaches so moved up a couple of steps but still a reasonable angle. I didn't want to move around too much as I was just please to be there shooting.

Please let me know what you think as I have a lot to learn.

Thanks,

Mark

Canon 1D mkIII with Canon 70-200mm f2.8 L IS.

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These aren't too bad. I'm actually really suprised at the amount of noise these have coming from the 1D3. Were these shot at ISO 6400? Did you do any post work to them?

The noise is my fault, I didn't check histogram and relied on the lady who shoots for the team to get my settings under their lights, but these were about 2/3 stop under so I had to pull them back in PP which wasn't great. I would have been better at ISO 6400 rather than 3200 but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So apart from the noise what could make them better than not being too bad?

I'm seeing a slight bit of motion blur. What was your shutter speed? I usually try to get at least 1/400th but really that's not quick enough. The gyms I shot in are so dark it's hard to get any faster. As far as your focus and compositions, it sure doesn't look like it's your first time shooting basketball. Get your exposures right and everything else falls into place. Also play around with some contrast and sharpening. Not bad at all Mark.

Thanks, I was at 1/500s so I could have got 1/640s at ISO6400 with proper exposure out of the camera which would have been better (as I said these were 2/3 under on the skin tones).

In case you care, here's my first basketball shot backin Dec 2007. I never shot b-ball before then.

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At least your first ones look better than mine.

Kelly,
Would you mind sharing what you learned about how to set up your camera from 3 months after your first time covering hoops?

Mark,
How were you able to able to bring these images up in PP, levels, brightness, contrast?

Baseball this year is going to be in a poorly lit field, and in aperture priority I'm rarely above 1/200 @ ISO 3200 w/ a 80-200/2.8, that could be because the uniforms were a navy blue, but I would like to get my ss to at least 1/400. I thought I'd play around higher ISO but I wasn't getting anything better.

Any advice you could give would be wonderful.

Thanks, Ayden

Ayden,
I don't know how much you know about using the * button to start auto focus, but doing that increased my keeper rate. Also I have to give alot of credit to the canon 85mm f/1.8. This lens is amazing for basketball. The focus is fast and the IQ beats everything else I have. I started out shooting unde the basket, then moved to the corners. I feel like I get better stuff from the corners. Also, shoot in manual mode with servo focus and keep the ISO as low as you can. Make sure not to underexpose with high ISO.