Action Shots In High School Gyms

[kgb224]

Lol When one is hooked one will get up early just to capture the special picture.
A outstanding night time capture.
I am looking forward seeing more pictures posted by you.

[73rocks]

Originally Posted by kgb224

Lol When one is hooked one will get up early just to capture the special picture.
A outstanding night time capture.
I am looking forward seeing more pictures posted by you.

Thanks again for the positive comment kgb. Yeah, I will admit it . . . I am hooked on photography. As I stated in the other post when I am on vacation I like to set aside at least one night for rest so I can get up before sunrise and get a few "pre dawn" shots. Here is one I took at 6:00 AM in Puerto Vallarta at the Riu Jalisco Hotel in 2008:



It looks a lot better with the larger veiw in Flickr.

This winter we are headed for Cabo . . . I am already planning my stategy to get some good shots of The Arch of Poseidon and some great bird wachting shots in the San Jose Estuary. Gee whiz . . . I am ready to leave tomorrow just thinking of it. Well that and it was -24 in NE SD when I got up this morning!

[AdamR]

Useful tip

[73rocks]

Originally Posted by 73rocks

I keep seeing posts asking what the best way is for novices like me to capture indoor high school action shots in small gyms.

I have been shooting high school sports photos for a couple of small town newspapers in NE SD for about 6 years now and what I found that works for me best is to use just a plain old 50mm f1.8 prime lens with my Canon 50D and Eos Xti. Sure you can’t zoom in on the action, but these small gyms don’t have that much room under the baskets anyway. I found that most of the time when I did use my 70 – 200mm zoom lens I had it at minimum focal length most of the time anyway. Plus when I did use the zoom, I was over extending my flash unit too. With a 15 Meg chip, I can do all my zooming by cropping later on.

I went on eBay and bought a used Canon prime lens for $70 and have been using it since. Most of the time I shoot in shutter priority around 400/sec, the ISO set around 640 or 800, and almost always without using the flash or strobes. One of the added benefits of not shooting without the flash is that my flash unit isn’t always giving off that annoying preflash burst. Below is just one example of some of the great shots I got at a game last night using this very set up. For more of my shots check out my photos on Flickr under my username 73Rocks.

Hope this helps out a little.

Just adding to my original thread on this subject -
On Thursday night I had the pleasure of shooting 2 games in a small gym that had (1) real good lighting in a bright gym (2) a lot of room under one of the baskets. Here is one of my shots using my 85mm f1.8 / No flash / 125sec shutter speed / 500 ISO:


To sum up my critique – scrape together $100 and get a Canon 50mm f1.8 prime lens and save your 70-300 zoom for track season.