Indoor Basketball Advice

quark

I am not a sports photographer, so I am hopeful a few of the experts here can help me out. What equipment/techniques do you use to get nice sharp pictures for indoor basketball (high school)?

Specifically:
- What lenses work best? (body is Canon 20D)
- Tripod?
- Would 200mm get you close enough for the action?

I don't even typically attend games like this so I am open to all advice.

aktse

check out the tutorial on dgrin.

How to Shoot Indoor Basketball

quark

Thanks. That addresses many questions, but I was hoping for more specifics on what lenses the forum shooters have had good luck with. Are most of your content with the 100mm mentioned in the tutorial? 200 mm too much?

vt1122

For indoor basketball the fastest lens possible. I usually use either the 50 1.4 when under the basket or 70-200 2.8 if I'm further away. Lighting in high school gyms is going to be terrible.
An 85mm 1.4 would be my dream lens, which would give you about 125mm with the crop factor. You won't need a tripod since you are going to have to keep your shutter speeds up to freeze the action anyway. The other thing is the white balance under those fluorescent lights most gyms have. Still working on that one myself. The 85 1.8 is also a good choice and a lot less cost than the 1.4.

cecilc

quark wrote:

... more specifics on what lenses the forum shooters have had good luck with. Are most of your content with the 100mm mentioned in the tutorial? 200 mm too much?

I have shot basketball - at one time or another - with the following lenses:
* 85 1.8
* 100 2.0
* 135 2.0
* 28-70 2.8
* 80-200 2.8
* 400 2.8

They all work fine for basketball .... as far as I'm concerned, there is not one of them that I would consider too "long" for the sport. Now, having said that, I actually "prefer" the 85 1.8 and the 135 2.0 for high school gyms. For better lit venues, I'll go with a 2.8 lens.

In high school gyms, the real "killer" is the lighting - it's terrible !! Uneven coverage; cycling lights; and weird color casts .... it's just the worst ! If you can, strobe whatever gym you're shooting - it'll give you "daylight" quality light and will allow shooting at lower ISO's and at 4.0 or 4.5 to get a little more depth of field. Your shutter speed needs to be a minumum of 1/250 (and I prefer it at 1/400). Anything less than 1/250 and you will get motion blur .... If you're shooting with strobes, most likely you'll be shooting at 1/250 anyway since that's the speed most cameras sych at.

Good luck ...

RandySmugMug

if you can stand under the basket the sigma 30 1.4 works nicely