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Hey Carey! My basketball pics (C-700)

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MrPhoto

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Hi Carey,

Well, here are my shots. Care, you were so right! Shooting basketball is really hard! The players are way too fast and these little digicams with their shutter lag and slow autofocus have a hard time keeping up. Unfortunately, I don't know basketball as well as say, tennis, so I can't anticipate the shot in my mind before it happens. But, I learned a lot from looking at your photos, thanks!

Here's what I did. I shot with the B-300 1.7x teleconverter on my C-700. I had the camera on a monopod. I came to realize that the easiest way to do this was to keep the monopod very short and just keep it on my seat, rather than on the floor. I shot everything in ISO 400, HQ mode (my personal preference). I got most of my shots around 1/80 sec, maybe 1/100 sec. I shot exclusively in manual exposure mode, auto focus.

You'll see a lot of shots where one player is in focus and the others are not. The player in focus is standing still and the other guys are moving. There just wasn't enough light to freeze the guys in motion.

My conclusions after this experience:

1. In order to freeze indoor action shots, you need a camera that is capable of shooting at ISO 1600, minimum.

2. ISO 400 is not so bad!! The pics didn't turn out noisy at all. The trick is, DO NOT underexpose! If you expose correctly and the image does not have too many dark areas, the shot will be relatively clean. But, do not, under any circumstances, underexpose.
3. Given #2, I should have tried ISO 800.
4. The B-300 is a wonderful lens!
5. Monopods are a pain (but they do the job)!

Here are the pictures:

http://www.pbase.com/byuey/njnets&page=all
 
After reading you put your shots down, I didn't expect to much, but they are great. The ball hanging on the rim with the players and the crowd watching it; is very good! We don't have pro ball in this part of N.C. so most of my action comes from water sports. Keep up the great photos, Shelton. --C-2100UZ-B300
 
Great job! Tomorrow I am going to attempt (again!) some action photography of a volleyball tournament. I plan on taking yours and Doms words of advice taking these shots.

Enjoyed your photos.

Barbara
C2100uzi
 
Thanks, Shelton. Quite honestly, the only shot that I really like is the one of the opening tip off. I've been to North Carolina a couple of times on business. I guess the only professional sports team you have is in hockey, right? I always thought that was kind of ironic. :)

Bill
 
Thanks, Barbara. At least with volleyball, the players stay within a relatively small area. I tried following a couple of the star players (Kidd, Spreeweel, Houston, Van Horn) but they were all over the place!

I'm going to stick to baseball :).
Barbara Breitsameter said:
Great job! Tomorrow I am going to attempt (again!) some action
photography of a volleyball tournament. I plan on taking yours and
Doms words of advice taking these shots.

Enjoyed your photos.

Barbara
C2100uzi
Click to expand...
 
MrPhoto said:
Bill Yuey wrote:

I've been to North Carolina a couple of times on business. I guess the only professional > sports team you have is in hockey, right?
Click to expand...
Bill, I guess you forgot about the Charlotte Hornets and the Carolina Panthers... then again... on second thought perhaps you are correct. (grins)--Bob 'MacTarheel'Olympus CAMEDIA C-2100 Ultra Zoom http://www.pbase.com/mactarheel/galleries 'Proud to support pbase'
 
Hi Bill,

Each time i see your photos i am amazed how well you can use the camera, and these are amazing. The colors are really good and even if the lighting was not the best you surely got the best out of it :)

Too bad you did not tried at least couple of shots in ISO 800, i would have love to see them, maybe next time.
Bill Yuey said:
Hi Carey,

Well, here are my shots. Care, you were so right! Shooting
basketball is really hard! The players are way too fast and these
little digicams with their shutter lag and slow autofocus have a
hard time keeping up. Unfortunately, I don't know basketball as
well as say, tennis, so I can't anticipate the shot in my mind
before it happens. But, I learned a lot from looking at your
photos, thanks!

Here's what I did. I shot with the B-300 1.7x teleconverter on my
C-700. I had the camera on a monopod. I came to realize that the
easiest way to do this was to keep the monopod very short and just
keep it on my seat, rather than on the floor. I shot everything in
ISO 400, HQ mode (my personal preference). I got most of my shots
around 1/80 sec, maybe 1/100 sec. I shot exclusively in manual
exposure mode, auto focus.

You'll see a lot of shots where one player is in focus and the
others are not. The player in focus is standing still and the
other guys are moving. There just wasn't enough light to freeze
the guys in motion.

My conclusions after this experience:

1. In order to freeze indoor action shots, you need a camera that
is capable of shooting at ISO 1600, minimum.
2. ISO 400 is not so bad!! The pics didn't turn out noisy at all.
The trick is, DO NOT underexpose! If you expose correctly and
the image does not have too many dark areas, the shot will be
relatively clean. But, do not, under any circumstances,
underexpose.
3. Given #2, I should have tried ISO 800.
4. The B-300 is a wonderful lens!
5. Monopods are a pain (but they do the job)!

Here are the pictures:

http://www.pbase.com/byuey/njnets&page=all
Click to expand...
--Daniella http://www.pbase.com/zylenC7OO discussion group: http://www.homepet.com/cgi-bin/c700/UltraBoard.cgi
 
Thanks, Daniella. Coming from you, that's quite a compliment. Everybody here still looks to you as the expert on using the C-700. I agree with them!

Yeah, I regret not trying ISO 800, too. I'll probably try it during some night baseball games. I was really surprised at how well ISO 400 worked out. I have used it before, but in P mode and not realizing the camera was underexposing the shot (I wasn't paying attention to the viewfinder). Once I understood what was happening, I started shooting exclusively in full manual mode in low light situations. It has made an amazing difference. I think I understand all the strengths and weaknesses of this camera pretty well, now, as I'm sure you do as well.

Bill
 
Hey Will, ;)

Your photos came out very nice!

Oddly enough, I think your higher seats worked out to your advantage, especially with that B300 to compensate for the added distance. It seemed to work really well.

The biggest thing I notice about your photos versus mine is how your players stand out so nicely against the hardwood floor backdrop (well, and how your had at least one team with a nice colorful uniform instead of the drab blacks and grays the two we saw.)

I was sitting quite low, which gave closer to a "Sports Illustrated" angle, but also meant a much more cluttered backdrop, with hundreds of faces in the stands competing for attention.

The pros make this work by using big glass and wide apertures for a tight DOF and the coveted OOF background to blur out all the other faces. They also sit closer, so don't have to use as much zoom and its resulting "foreshortening" that makes near and far stuff appear to be the same size. Of course, they pay through the nose for all that, so I'm still pretty impressed at what I can now get for $500!

And regarding the ISO issue, you're sure right that a clean 1600 or more would be just wonderful. But even with my current camera, the 400 and 800 modes are seeming more and more viable, especially for "web viewing", scaled down to 25% or 50% size. At 1:1 though, they are still annoyingly unclean.

I'm going to order some 4x6 prints soon of both NeatImage'd and raw 400/800 ISO shots to see how they look printed at that size though.

Thanks for sharing your shots and info... this is a fun way to learn, eh?
--Cheers, Carey( http://www.pbase.com/ckriger )
 
CKriger said:
The pros make this work by using big glass and wide apertures for a
tight DOF and the coveted OOF background to blur out all the other
faces.
Click to expand...
Hi Carey,

Thanks for your insights. One thing I noticed in these shots was that I seemed to have a lot of depth of field, despite the long lens and the big aperature (look at the shot with Spreewell - the sign behind him is perfectly in focus and it must be about 6 feet away from him). I know that DOF increases the further away you are from your subject, so maybe that was the contributing factor. Given that, I'm wondering if it would have been smarter to use manual focus and just use 'zone focusing' to take advantage of the depth of field. With everything on manual (exposure control and focusing), maybe I could have made the camera a little bit more responsive. I'll have to try this next I'm at an indoor sporting event. That may be awhile, though as baseball season is just around the corner. I'm looking forward to shooting my son's Little League season. This will be the first season where I have the C-700. Before that, I've always shot film.

Bill
 
Thanks, Dom. I was sitting in the next to last row (25) in the lower tier. So, pretty much in the middle of all available seats.

How was skiing?

Bill
DomDP said:
close you were sitting, if you did sorry playing catch up today,
just back from vacation
--
DomDP-NJ
C-2100UZ
Pbase Supporter

http://www.pbase.com/domdp

'What concerns me is not the way things are,
but rather the way people think things are.'
-Epictetus-
Click to expand...
 
Bill Yuey said:
Thanks, Dom. I was sitting in the next to last row (25) in the
lower tier. So, pretty much in the middle of all available seats.
Click to expand...
I like your method you described...
MrPhoto said:
How was skiing?
Click to expand...
Great, I posted some a link to all the pics. It is good to get away for a few days.
MrPhoto said:
Bill
DomDP said:
close you were sitting, if you did sorry playing catch up today,
just back from vacation
--
DomDP-NJ
C-2100UZ
Pbase Supporter

http://www.pbase.com/domdp

'What concerns me is not the way things are,
but rather the way people think things are.'
-Epictetus-
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--DomDP-NJC-2100UZPbase Supporter http://www.pbase.com/domdp 'What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.'-Epictetus-
 
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