Local College basketball rival

[KFred]

Let me first state that I am very new to photography (2 weeks). I do realize the gear I am using is not the best for indoor sports, but I have to make do with what I have. I had a nice post typed out but when I submitted I had to log in again, hah. I really like taking sports photographs so let me know what you think

Rebel XT
1600 ISO
1/200
28-80mm F/3.5-5.8
auto white balance
Manual

We won this game after being down 15 points pretty late in the second half. It was a very fun, intense match up.

The white balance in this photo is off, but LR is being funky with finding the photo again so I just went ahead and uploaded it anyway.

F/5.6 42mm 1/200


F/5.6 65mm 1/200

[BCampbell]

Good snapshots; the first would be better if you were facing the main subject but not much you can do about that. The second obviously suffers from a lot of blur.

Curious why you're using a 28-80mm... as far as I know, this is an older lens that was a kit lens with many 35mm film cameras. You could probably get much better results with a small investment in a better lens; if these focal lengths are representative of what you typically shoot, the 50mm f/1.4 or even f/1.8 should work fine, you can crop a little if you need to. You could also look into the Canon 85mm f/1.8, or a few other lenses around that range.

The reason I say that is you could really benefit from slight faster shutter speeds, dropping from from f/5.6 to f/1.8 is three stops; that would let you go to ISO 400 and halve your shutter speed to really freeze action. If you want some more depth of field, shooting around f/2.2 is around 2 stops, where you could shoot ISO 800 and still halve your shutter speed.