With Basketball season dragging on I decided to do something different. I took my 400mm football lens to the basketball game. It was challenging to use but fun and I think rewarding. These were shot from both the upper bleachers and from the floor but all the way across the court.

Basketball

Still working on doing team photos and upping my off camera lighting skills.  The main gym at North Mason has good light but very little room to work.  It makes up for lack of room by having a balcony I can shoot from.

Sold one of my D7100, would like to get a second D500, but can't yet justify it.

Got Godox speedlights, no more messing with up to 12 AA batteries at a time.

A nice wrestling photo essay, wrestling under the spotlight

Slam Dunk.  My editor said that as far as he knew this was the first time he had
ever run a photo of a high school boy dunking the ball.  Yelm at Shelton Boys Basketball

Jan 12 B12-13

Wrestling under the spot light.  This is tricky stuff and my new camera really helped.  Most of the shots that were printed were taken with my D500 with my f/2.8 70-200 Lens.  There are a few wide angle shots taken with my D7100 f/2.8 17-50 Sigma lens and external flash.  The flash photos with the d7100 were poorer quality, but the wide lens let me get in closer.  I'd love to have two D500's, but that's just not happening.

Jan 12 B-1

Jan 12 B-1

Jan 12 B-5

This bowling meet was in Port Orchard and Kitsap Sun photographer Larry Steagall was there.  You can bet that I watched him so I could learn.  He tended to hold his camera over his head a lot, so I did the same for the high five shot.  Ron Quin was there as well.

Jan 12 B-6

Jan 12 B-12

Jan 12, b-13

Happy New Year!

Jan 5 A-1 and A-12-13 Center Spread

I had my second camera set up on the beach to get a photograph of the swimmers from behind, while I stood in the water to get a photo of the swimmers from the front.  I had my beach camera set to interval shooting.  My beach camera took on picture per second until the memory card was full.  This is a good technique for covering all the angles at and event that is over in a flash.

B-1

B-3

Varsity page

Basketball

Dec 29 A-1

These past few weeks I have learned that our home school's stadium and gym are among the darkest around.  So I guess I got thrown in off the deep end by learning to photograph sports in our local venues.

My "holiday run" is about to end, the new sports reporter starts Jan. 9th.   My paper has never sent me to photo a sporting that they have also sent a reporter too.   I'm trying to let my photos speak for themselves and hoping they will see the value in sending both a reporter and a photographer.

My 50mm f/1.9 is now my favorite basketball lens.  I like to sit near the baseline and to my right of the back of the backboard to get most of the shots.  I've also started to experiment with shooting from the stands to get a clean background and to get away from the referees who often block my views.

Dec29 B-1  

Nikon D500

50.0 mm f/1.8

ƒ/1.8

 

50.0 mm

1/1250

 

3200

Flash (off, did not fire)

 

Dec 29 B-3

Dec 22 B-1

Dec 22 B-4

Dec 22 B-5

My Holiday Sports run Continues!

Still a couple of weeks left in my Holiday Run.  December can be a great month for a stringer.  Loving my D500 camera.  Love the low light capablity of it, love the frame per second, love the anti-flicker technology.  Love that the focus point can be set to move when you change from horizontal to vertical shooting.  Love that it came with a name brand battery grip.

My only real compliant about the D500 it so far is the way it eats up batteries.  I have a lot of extra batterie and using a battery grip help.

More sports photos and some wild art

Learned that its okay to shoot basketball and wider apertures than imagined.  My 50mm prime lens set at f/ 2.0 did a fine job.  I'm very tempted to leave my 17-50mm  f/ 2.8 zoom at home for basketball, but it can be nice for wide horizontal shots.  More on that next week when the shots get printed.

Dec 1 B-22

Dec 1 A-24

Dec 1 B-4

More Basketball

I've learned to turn the ISO all the way up so I can get the highest shutter speed possible.

1/800th f/ 2.8 ISO 3200 125mm Nikon D7100 with 70-200 VR1 lens

Before I started my venture into sports photography I was loath to ever turn up the ISO over 800 due to grain issues.  Now I've learned to turn it all the way up if need be.  My new camera is 24MP so that helps a bit.  I'm shooting with on D7100 and one D90.  The D90 is 12MP and it does show the grain more, also it does not focus at fast.  I have a second D7100 coming in the mail and then I should be done with camera upgrades for a least a year or two.  I still would like to get a high end mirror-less camera for street photography.

The native ISO for my D90 is 3,200 and for my D7100 is 6,400

Basketball

This was my first basketball game and it was really fun.  I'm happy with my photos too.

I used both my D90 and my D7100.

The venue is so dark that I did pop my flash just a little bit to get the best exposure.  I'm not sure though if my flash made a difference other than psychological, since I set the cameras up to get good exposure without the flash.  Also my flash was somehow set to manual and it's lowest setting of 128, the pictures looked good and the game was moving fast, so I did not attempt to change it.

I used a custom white balance on both cameras.  I established my white balance by taking a picture of a white dry erase board near the door.  I shot in RAW.

In spite of presetting my focus on a players head, I still botched the focus on the tip off.  The referees are taller than the players so I took the tip off shot from up in the bleacher.

I used back button focus and spot metering on both cameras for the entire game.

Both teams are local teams, so I stayed on the same side after half time to photograph the other team.  I was on the same side as the cheerleaders.  During the second half on referee always stood right in front of where I wanted to be so I had to change my position a bit.

My next basketball game did not go as well for me.  I think the spot metering caused trouble when my camera was pointed at the lights as I was sitting down.

Next time in the mini dome I will use manual mode and set both cameras to f /2.8 1/250 2500

       North Mason player Hailey Simonson looks to make a pass as Shelton’s  Aurora Gouley 15, defends in
the first half of the game at the Shelton minidome on December 21st.  No flash for this picture

Nikon D7100

70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8

ƒ/2.8

 

70.0 mm

1/250

 

2500

Flash (off, did not fire)

 

Shot with my old trusty D90.   Bulldog Cheyenne Filer makes a fast break past Vanessa Kennedy
and jumps to make a one handed shot during the first half. 

Nikon D90

17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8

ƒ/3.5

 

50.0 mm

1/200

 

1600

Flash (on, fired)

 

Shelton's    Timber Ware makes a fast break and completes a layup shot during the 

second half.  The Defender is Jenna Rock

Nikon D7100

17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8

ƒ/3.2

 

50.0 mm

1/250

 

2500

Flash (on, fired)

   Timber Ware has plenty of room to make a one handed shot during the second half

Nikon D7100

17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8

ƒ/4.0

 

36.0 mm

1/250

 

Flash (on, fired) 2500

1.       Bulldog Hannah Womack reacts as she hits the floor hard while the two teams fight for the ball on the floor with 6 minutes remaining in the game.    (Womack hurt her ankle earlier in the game and left the Bulldogs with no one on the bench.  She returned during the second half.)

Nikon D7100

17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8

ƒ/4.0

 

32.0 mm

1/250

 

2500

Flash (on, fired)

 

    Climbers Timber Ware and Kaitlyn Allen battle for possession of the ball with Bulldog

 Hannah Womack  at Shelton’s end of the court during the third quarter

Nikon D7100

17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8

ƒ/3.2

 

27.0 mm

1/250

 

2500

Flash (on, fired)

 

  Shelton Cheerleaders clap and pound on the floor during a time out in the fourth quarter

Nikon D90

70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8

ƒ/2.8

 

200.0 mm

1/250

 

2500

Flash (off, did not fire)

 

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