USF Men's Basketball Game

FearNothing321

This was my first time shooting a basketball game. I was using a Nikon D3100, Nikon 70-200 f 2.8 VR I, ISO 3200, shutter speed 1/500 and 1/640

The lighting in the arena was crap so I was forced to up my ISO to 3200.

Here are some of my pictures of the game

1.


Tip off by Blue Moon Originals, on Flickr

2.


Making a 3 pointer by Blue Moon Originals, on Flickr

3.


Fastbreak by Blue Moon Originals, on Flickr

4. (this one got published in our school newspaper)


Published photo by Blue Moon Originals, on Flickr

5.


Making a jump shot by Blue Moon Originals, on Flickr

6.


Shooting a 3 Pointer by Blue Moon Originals, on Flickr

photodad1

Good action shots. Where you shooting manual or Aperture priority?

FearNothing321

photodad1 wrote: »

Good action shots. Where you shooting manual or Aperture priority?

Thank you, full manual

Islandcrow

You really need to crop in much tigher on many of these. I think #5 turned out quite well. Good action, and good interaction between players (conflict is always more interesting), but it would be better if you cropped in a little tighter. Good job overall, though. Indoor sports are tough to shoot. . .poor lighting, often tough to move around the court. . .always a challenge.

johng

You have some nice action here. But there are several issues that keep the shots from being better:
1) framed way too loosely. I disagree slightly with the above poster - you don't want to crop heavily when shooting at high ISOs you need to frame more tightly IN CAMERA.

2) shots are under exposed. FACES are what matter - the faces are too much in shadow

3) white balance is off. Set a custom WB and that will help greatly.

For a first time shooting basketball you did well. 2 of the above (WB and exposure) are very quick fixes for next shoot. Being comfortable framing tightly will take more experience.

FearNothing321

Next time I shoot a basketball game I am going to take into account to slightly overexpose my images.

Islandcrow

johng wrote: »

You have some nice action here. But there are several issues that keep the shots from being better:
1) framed way too loosely. I disagree slightly with the above poster - you don't want to crop heavily when shooting at high ISOs you need to frame more tightly IN CAMERA.

2) shots are under exposed. FACES are what matter - the faces are too much in shadow

3) white balance is off. Set a custom WB and that will help greatly.

For a first time shooting basketball you did well. 2 of the above (WB and exposure) are very quick fixes for next shoot. Being comfortable framing tightly will take more experience.

Agree with you on #1, but since he's already shot the photo, it's a little too late to re-frame. Obviously, you're going to better maintain image quality, especially at high ISOs by framing tighter, but unless it's a still image, I know I still almost always have to crop the image even further in PP. But I am glad you pointed out that you should first shoot tighter. That's probably what I should have led with.

FearNothing321 wrote: »

Next time I shoot a basketball game I am going to take into account to slightly overexpose my images.

As for "overexposing", it may be a bit of semantics, but you don't want to overexpose. You want to expose correctly. One of the nice things about indoor sports is unless the court is lit very unevenly, it's very easy to dial in a good exposure and just leave it there (i.e. shoot in manual). Even if it is unevenly lit, I'll usually just make a mental note of what shutter speed I want to use at the far ends of the court, where sometimes it's a little darker. Depending on the range of tones, I may expose a little further to the right than the gray card is telling me, but that's not to be confused with overexposing, where you're now losing detail in your highlights, which will be very apparent in shots like this.