Nikon D50 and action shots

Joined: 25 Jun 2006 Posts: 33

I have a Nikon D50 and I have a Quantaray 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 lens, not a very expensive lens I know, but someone has asked me shot takes some shots at their sons basketball game, and I need to know the what are the best settings to use, to enable me to get so good action shots. I tried this before, and most of the shots came out blurry.

Thanks
Juanb

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:03 pm

Are we looking at indoor basketball here? if so you are going to struggle to keep the shutter speed fast enough with that lens.

Your best chance will be to crank the ISO up as high as it will go, select aperture priority mode and open the lens right up. This will give you the fastest shutter speed the light will allow with your equipment.

If it's a really well lit gym and you can get speeds better than 1/250th, back off the ISO a little.

The shots you get will be quite noisy and probably there will be some motion blur going on, but you'll still be doing better than any compact. If you manage to get some good ones then Neatimage can be used to clean up the noise a bit.

Try to stay at the short end of the zoom if you can, as you have a little more light to play with there and the motion blur wont show up as much.

hope this helps

Joined: 25 Jun 2006 Posts: 33

ok, I have another question about getting shots at this basketball game. What if I site close, and use my sigma 105mm 1:2.8D Macro to get some acton shots. I know it's a marco lens, but since it's a faster lens F2.8, do you think I could get some action shots?

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 7:40 pm

juanb1203 wrote:

ok, I have another question about getting shots at this basketball game. What if I site close, and use my sigma 105mm 1:2.8D Macro to get some acton shots. I know it's a marco lens, but since it's a faster lens F2.8, do you think I could get some action shots?

You're definitely better off using the f/2.8. The 105mm is plenty of length to get good action shots if you're near the court and the f/2.8 will help keep the shutter speeds high. You'll still probably have to kick the ISO to 1600, but you'll be better off that way than with the other lens.

I shoot basketball a lot in junior high gyms. With the 50mm f/1.8, I can get ISO around 800, sometimes less. Today I used the Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 and my ISO was consistently around 1600, but that was with a +3 EV.

Anyway, use the 105mm, set the shutter to 1/320 or so and you should be fine.

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 3:52 am

yes, pack a bag of your fastest lenses. When I go shooting fencing pics I take

35mm F2.4
50mm F1.7
90mm F2.5 (macro)
135mm F2.5

I rarely even bother to take zooms with me because I have yet to manage to afford an F2.8 zoom.

Macro lenses generally work pretty well all the way to infinity

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 11:11 pm

is that the takumar 2.5 mongoose?

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 1:52 am

Or try shooting in shutter priority mode with your shutter speed at 1/250 or 1/500. Start with a lower ISO like 800 and meter the light to see if it is underexposed at your lens's largest aperture. If it is, you'll have to crank up the ISO like Mongoose says. The 250 or 500 will stop action. Also, shoot with a monopod or tripod and panning to cover the action. Monopods usually work best for indor.

Set a custom white balance as well or you'll get the orange glow from the gym lights.