Providence Womens Friars basketball and advice request

SirGeorge

Basketball is not one of my area's of specialty but I took these last night at the Providence Women's Friars versus Hartford last night - most of my shots were taken on a 70mm-200mm f/2.8 with some taken on a 135mm f/2 and 50mm f/1.4. (at f2.8 I had to shoot at ISO3200 and I cleaned the images up with Neat Image).

I noticed the the shots on the 70-200mm were pretty good and consistent and with the other lenses not so much - it is almost as if they cannot react fast enough in the gym light. I was using aperture priority - would it be better to use manual settings.

rainbow

It is unclear from your post if the issue is metering for exposure. If so, that would not be a reaction from the lens. More likely, it is due to the background or position that you are on the court when using the different focal lengths. For example, a 135 will fill the frame more with the player (like your first shot) while a 50 mm would have much more background (like the second shot). This may over or under expose a shot depending on the background AND the uniform color.

Uniform color is very influential in your meter's choice of exposure. In shooting basketball, I liked the road colors for exposure much more than the home whites. The whites made the skin tones dark and difficult to get right for white balance. It helped me a lot to shoot in RAW instead of JPeg.

Also be aware that some gym lights cycle through different color casts. You can notice it if you shoot off a series and wonder why some look so different than the others.

SirGeorge

Lens response
Thanks for the response.

I guess my concern is simply the fact that I had many more 'soft' shots with the 50 and 135 - they simply did not perform anywhere close to the 70-200. I would expect that, to a degree, from the 50mm but I expected more from the 135mm. I guess I need to experiment a bit -but thank again for your thoughts.

regards,
George.

rainbow wrote:

It is unclear from your post if the issue is metering for exposure. If so, that would not be a reaction from the lens. More likely, it is due to the background or position that you are on the court when using the different focal lengths. For example, a 135 will fill the frame more with the player (like your first shot) while a 50 mm would have much more background (like the second shot). This may over or under expose a shot depending on the background AND the uniform color.

Uniform color is very influential in your meter's choice of exposure. In shooting basketball, I liked the road colors for exposure much more than the home whites. The whites made the skin tones dark and difficult to get right for white balance. It helped me a lot to shoot in RAW instead of JPeg.

Also be aware that some gym lights cycle through different color casts. You can notice it if you shoot off a series and wonder why some look so different than the others.

rainbow

SirGeorge wrote:

Thanks for the response.

I guess my concern is simply the fact that I had many more 'soft' shots with the 50 and 135 - they simply did not perform anywhere close to the 70-200. I would expect that, to a degree, from the 50mm but I expected more from the 135mm. I guess I need to experiment a bit -but thank again for your thoughts.

regards,
George.

I have excellent results with my 135L. Are you using single center point (recommended) for focus? I prefer "One shot" to "AI Servo" most of the time as other players or the background tend to grab the focus away from my subject. ...Hope this helps...