Hs basketball--take 2

[Wingman]

I headed out to the high school games earlier today and gave it another shot. This time, I shot from floor level and must admit that I prefer the compositions compared to shooting down from the stands.

Event with the f/2.8 lens and at ISO 800, I was unable to get shutter speeds fast enought to freeze motion. Once again, I would appreciate any suggestions from the pro sports shooters out there on how to freeze the motion..should I shoot at ISO 1600? Any other comments and critisisms are welcome. John G, if you are listening. . .

Nikon 300DS + Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR.

Note motion blur on the ball.



Same here...ball and legs



This one looks OK


More motion blur





Aaawww....come awwwnnnn.....

[Mark1616]

The 2nd to last, even though it has blur has nice sharp faces so really works for me as an artistic shot.

You have some white balance issues so I would shoot using custom white balance.

With regard to shutter speeds you are getting anything from 1/125s to 1/200s so you need to be bumping that ISO. With the D300s you can work easily at ISO 3200 and this is where you need to be, in a dark hole of a gym you can push to ISO6400, it is better to have the noise rather than blur (in general).

I would also be shooting manual so that you don't get these varied shutter speeds. Let's assume than 1/160s was correct for a good exposure (expose for the faces always and don't under expose when using high ISO settings that will kill your shots), going form ISO 800 to 3200 is going to give you a shutter speed of 1/640s, this is a very desirable speed to have for sports shooting in a gym.

[Wingman]

Thanks for the feedback Mark! I'll have try again with a higher ISO...I wasn't sure how much noise I would be able to mask with post processing, but your are right in the preference for frozen action vs. motion blur.

Re. the WB, what are you seeing on your monitor in terms of color bias...i.e. green, blue, or yellow? Is it on all images or some (I made some minor adjustments in PSE 8). From my recollection of the lighting in the gym, the WB looks OK to my eyes. When I set the WB on the camera to fluorescent, it actually resulted in a pink hue. I have a WB calibration disk which I should consider using on my next attempt.

Thanks again for your helpful comments.

[JohnG]

I'm not sure if it's WB - it might be how you have your colors set up. White looks pretty white but flesh tones are too yellow/orange and non-white colors are too warm / over saturated.

[Wingman]

Thanks John for your feedback as well. I need to check the color calibration of my monitor. My camera is set for high saturation and I pulled it back during post processing. I'll work on it further and see how it looks.

Jehan

[Mark1616]

Originally Posted by jelpee

My camera is set for high saturation and I pulled it back during post processing.

That's what's doing it, get the saturation to normal levels and they will look a lot more natural.