First Try at Indoor basketball - My son in a city league

[soliz39]

Man. . this was my very first time trying out my new Canon 30D on indoor basketball. . . talk about a learning experience!!! But I loved it!!

I took Jacks and JohnG advice and followed they're settings

Av Priority
1600 ISO
f /2.2
AI Servo
weighted metering

Shutter speed varied greatly from 500 to 3000!!!

Did not set a custom white balance. What I noticed was that a lot of the times, the camera would focus on an outside point as opposed to the center point in the viewfinder. So that the main action was a bit blurred while an outside player was crystal clear.

Is there anyway to ensure my focus is alwasy on center? I tried tracking the chest on all my shots. But some shots would always focus on an outside player. Also took some across court shots as well. I had no problem with getting a fast shutter speed as the gym was very well lit. Not sure i'll have the same luck in a high school gym.

While the photos aren't great, i can definitely see the potential this camera has in the right hands!! I only hope to improve over time. Thes pics are 100X better than my point and shoot digitial. Thanks for the great advice. Baby steps. . .

[soliz39]

pic 2

[soliz39]

At this point I had yet to realize i could rotate the camera 90 degrees. :?

[soliz39]

That's my stepson shooting

[soliz39]

Nice cross court shot. .

[soliz39]

Not as sharp as I'd like, but defintely shows potential!

[soliz39]

I could kick myself on this one. . . had a great shot. . but again. . in landscape mode. .

[soliz39]

This is an example of the outside player being in good focus while the main action was a bit blurry. .

[soliz39]

Again, not very sharp, but hopefully in time i can improve my skills. Also, none of these photos have any post processing. mainly becuase I have no clue what i'm doing with the software. Bottom line, had a blast and looking forward to improving my skills. I have a great admiration for those of you who takes these great shots I see posted all the time. It's not easy!
:|

[Mark1616]

Good work for a first attempt with your DSLR. There is one thing to not that will help you out loads is using unsharp mask. Point and shoot cameras do a lot more sharpening in camera but this is not the same with DSLR's so I would suggest the following settings

Radius 1.0

Strength between 70 and 120 (you will need to experiment, but when printing rather than publishing on the web you need to use a higher strength).

Clipping 0.0

I hope you don't mind but here is a quick example for you of using unsharp mask.... it is not the best as there were some jpg artifacts already in there and a little noise which it is better to get rid of when the res is higher, but hopefully gives you the idea.

You will be able to set to a middle point btw for focus, but not being a Canon man I don't know how you set this!

Mark.