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poor results / basketball hall!!!!
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I set camera (canon 20d) to sports mode and handed it to a friend to take some photos of a basketball game I was coaching.. I thought the mode was a point and shoot mode for sports…
The results were poor – the camera focused in on the stable and any motion was blurred!!!
Pity because there would have been some good action shots… about 600 shots were taken and very few are worth salvaging….
Any advice here….
Thanks
I’m not sure if setting the camera on “shutter priority” would help, but I’d imagine this is where your problem lies (ie slow shutter speed). The faster the shutter, the less blur in the movement. You will need a wide aperture setting too. If the lighting is good, you should be able to get a fairly decent shutter speed. You could also increase the ISO to give you a little extra, but this might increase camera noise.
You don’t say exactly what is wrong with the images you got but a lot of members will not
be surprised that the results were not great using an auto mode.I’m not an expert on sports photography but heres a few thoughts anyway.
There’s lots of things to consider when setting out to photograph something like basketball.
What type of images are you wanting to get?
What lighting is available?
Where will you be located?
How good is your lens?Lets assume you want to get action shots with the subject filling the frame.
You want the action to be frozen.
Lets assume also that you are not going to use a light meter.How close to the action you are located will determine what focal lenght lens you need.
A long telephoto will not be much use if you are very close while a standard or widish lens
will not be much help if you are in the back row of the stand.I’d say you would need a shutter speed of at least 1/250S but shorter if possible.
I would set the camera to aperture priority.
I would set the lens to it’s widest aperture.
I would try the ISO at 800.
With these settings I would check to see what shutter speed the camera sets in the lighting
conditions you are going to be shooting in.
If the shutter speed is less that 1/250 your only option is to increase the ISO.
This will probably result in some noise in the images but at least you will get some decent photos.You also need to make sure you are focussed on exactly the right area of the image as the depth of field
will be quite narrow with the wide open lens.Setting your camera to one of the automatic modes is not a guarantee of getting good shots.
Better to learn the relationship between shutter speed, f stops, ISO and focal length and use
your manual settings to get the results you want.I would also recommend setting your 20D to save a large jpeg and a RAW for every image.
It may take up a chunk of memory but you have greater flexibility for processing the image
with a RAW file.
The newest RAW conversion software is great for adjusting white balance and rescueing detail
in highlights and shadows.Getting good results is not easy but with a bit of knowledge and some practice is amazing what
you can achieve.The best of luck to you.
John.
Sports mode, would be “ok” for outdoor sports. It basically enables AI servo focus, and tries to maximise your shutter speed for the lighting conditions around you, but I don’t think it will boost the ISO much. In door sports, is very hard, as the light normally isn’t there. So that means that the camera will have to use slower shutter speeds to get the correct exposure and the reduction in light will also make the auto focus system slow.
Best thing to try, is to use Av and set it to the maximum aperture of your lens, set the camera in AI servo, and try a few different ISO settings, might have to be set to 800 or higher. Also if you friend wasn’t tracking the action, and the with the auto focus system slowed down the camera might have been mis-focusing.
Posting one of the photos would help as well, and details of what camera and lens that was being used.
CoincidentlyI also snapped at a basketball game the other week (weather payed havoc with footy fixtures so indoor was the way to go!)
Canon 40D, Av mode and had to bump up the iso to 1600 for a lot of shots. Results were grainy but as I never shot a basketball game
before I didnt mind too much
The 20d is the camera i use and its a great camera you just have to learn how to use it, For sport I would not use the auto modes as you found out to your disapointment you need as said before use AP and open up the lens f 2.8 f 4 or so to give you a fast enough shutter speed to stop the action, one thing i have noticed with the 20d is that it is one stop over all most all the time ( well mine are anyways) so as your inside and the light wont change take a test shot on AP check to make sure its fine on the screen then switch to manual and shoot at one shutter speed higher than what the AP shot at and with should be ok , I would imagine with basketball indoor poor lights would would need to be useing at least 1600 and maybe more
The image below was more than likely shot at 2.8 1600 it was at the National Stadium and the light is always rubbish
Some will say shot RAW but im not convinced on this for shooting sport
Thanks for all the great replies – a big learning curve but the responses are a nudge in the right direction. :D
The light was particularly bad in the hall – only half the lights were on.. I was using a canon 18-135 is lens on AF- I think the F stop on this lens is max 5. I didn’t think the sports mode was the best option but thought it would give ok results – I won’t be selecting it again indoors or probably ever.
I just looked at the photo info on one of the photos and the sports auto setting figured a shutter speed of 1/13 and an ISO of 400! I presume this is the main reason for the blur!
I was trying to post a sample but haven’t figured out how to do it yet…
Some great photos there folks – that looks very sore…
imagination wrote:
I just looked at the photo info on one of the photos and the sports auto setting figured a shutter speed of 1/13 and an ISO of 400! I presume this is the main reason for the blur!
If you used ISO 1600 you would have managed a shutter of 1/50. Still much too slow for sport or any movement for that matter.
If you had an f2.8 lens you would probably have managed 1/250. Still too slow to be honest for fast moving sport but you would have gotten some useable stuff at that speed.
Ta Ballyman…..
I’ll tinker with one of the manual modes nxt time… I had got better results using a 7D before but didn’t know who would be using it so I took the 20D. I find the 7D easier to use!
Those 70-200 2.8 canon lenes look sweet but I probably need to do a bit more learning before I buy any more gear! :roll: I’ve signed up to do a beginners course in the local IT and looking forward to the classes :D
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