Newbie looking for shooting basketball tips

riversinn

: I have just purchased a canon 20d and have shot my first hoop pics with a canon 85/1.8. I have shot mostly in Av mode shooting 800-1600/F 1.8. Shutter speeds seem to be all over the place from 1/500 - 1/1200. I am totally new to anything but fully automatic so would like some tips on basic settings and grow from there. I have two sons playing ... one on the freshman team and one on the varsity team. Each played in adjacent gyms and found the light to be completely different which had major effects on results. Have never manually set white balance but wonder if that would help me too.

One thing I did have difficulty with was getting focus on the subject. It seemed like the focus kept grabbing the background.

Any help would be appreciated. I have attached a couple of samples.

Steve Cavigliano

Hiya Riversinn and welcome to Dgrin

Shooting baskertball using available light is tough. Check out this recent B-ball thread. There's a ton of good info there

As far as focus, were you using the Center Focus point? You have to do lots of 1/2 pressing, as players move or things get between you and your subject. The AF loves contrast so if you are trying to get a lock on an area without much contrast, the AF can easily drift to a point with more contrast. Like backgrounds

Anyhow, welcome aboard and if the link above doesn't give you enough to chew on, let us know and we'll share more info with you

Steve

StevenV

riversinn wrote:

Have never manually set white balance but wonder if that would help me too.

hi. if that's your home gym, white balance will be fairly easy. just get close to the guys and get a shot of the back of a white jersey - doesn't even need to be in focus. then follow the camera's manual instructions; I've got a 10D and don't know if it's different but for the 10 i just jump in the menu, select Custom WB and find that picture, then (the part I'm more likely to forget) choose to use the Custom WB setting rather than AWB on the top-of-the-camera setting


the interesting thing will be if the lights in the gym "cycle." there are some lights which actually pulse and at diffrent miliseconds are giving off different colours. ick!

wxwax

Custom white balance
AI Servo
High ISO
Either manual or shutter priority - you want the fastest shutter speed you can get. I prefer manual. Set a wide open shutter, high ISO and see how fast you can get your shutter.
Learn to read your histogram - it's very easy. Keep the blob inside the right border and you'll be good. You move the blob around by varying your shuttter speed and ISO - leave the aperture wide open.

StevenV

wxwax wrote:

Keep the blob inside the right border and you'll be good.

There's a quote to remember!

riversinn

Thanks for the tips and links Steve. I did try using the center point to focus but found it to be harder to get the subject when moving but I will work on it. It is a challenge to be filling the frame with the subject moving and keeping it in focus. Seems to me all I can hope for now is luck and try to develop my panning skills as well continued re-focusing.

The link you shared for with tips suggests you "always" set a custom white balance in each gym you shoot in and explain how using a white piece of paper. Does it matter the brightness of the white paper you use?

Is there a way to post more then one image? When uploading the site only allows one image.

Thanks again for your help. This is such a fun site!

wxwax

Here's an explanation of how to post images on dgrin.

It assumes you know the difference between linking and attaching.

If you don't, here's the basic concept. If you have uplinked your photos to a photo sharing service, like smugmug (our parent), pbase, flickr - and they allow you to link to your photos - you can simply put a link to your photos in your posts here. Put in a bunch of links, and a bunch of photos show up.

But if your photos only exist on your computer, then you can only attach them, one at a time.

wxwax

riversinn wrote:

Thanks for the tips and links Steve. I did try using the center point to focus but found it to be harder to get the subject when moving but I will work on it. It is a challenge to be filling the frame with the subject moving and keeping it in focus. Seems to me all I can hope for now is luck and try to develop my panning skills as well continued re-focusing.

The link you shared for with tips suggests you "always" set a custom white balance in each gym you shoot in and explain how using a white piece of paper. Does it matter the brightness of the white paper you use?

River, read your manual.

It will explain how to custom white balance (if you use white, just make sure it's pure white, not tinted.) It will also explain AI Servo. AI Servo is the focus mode you need for sports.

Steve Cavigliano

Good info on setting a Manual/Custom white balance. It really helps make reviewing images in the LCD more pleasant. Yep, Waxy is right, go for white paper. Or, like me you can use a Kodak 18% Gray card ($5-$9 at most photo stores) to set your white balance.

I'd strongly recommend shooting in RAW with an associated jpg. That way if you need to do exposure adjustments or wb tweaking, RAW gives you the ability to easily do so. If not, you've already got a jpg to do minor tweaks to during post processing. Basically a shorter workflow :-)


Steve

StevenV

Steve Cavigliano wrote:

Yep, Waxy is right, go for white paper.

agreed. i only meant that the team having white uniforms would be an easy alternative (and then only before the game :)

Steve Cavigliano

StevenV wrote:

agreed. i only meant that the team having white uniforms would be an easy alternative (and then only before the game :)

Steven,
I agree also. I've used the gray card, a piece of printer paper, a styrafoam coffee cup (fit perfect on the end of the lens on my Sonys) and even a white board that you use dry erase markers on Whatever you can use. It may not be totally accurate, but it will usually get you within a couple hundred degrees of the right temp

Steve