Amateur Sports Photography

[raeleehansen]

I need help. I am a complete novice, with a Nikon D200 camera and several autofocus lenses. I run a company for a living and do it well, but I suck at figuring out my Nikon D200 settings. I am wanting to do one and only one thing with my camera:

I want to take basketball action shots of my daughter’s team.

I am not a professional. No one will ever print my pictures and they won’t be of any great value, except to the 12 girls on the team and their families. I want to be able to figure out what the settings should be to take inside (gymnasium) action shots and have them be reasonably good so the girls will think, “Cool,” when they see them on Facebook or when the team makes a scrapbook at the end of the season for the coach.

Currently, they turn out very yellow/green and are often grainy or blurry. I have read the manual. I have read multiple websites. I am still don’t have an intuitive sense of how to work the camera and I have little patience to try and figure it out. I just want someone to help me figure out how to set the camera (or which few settings out of the million there are to tweak) so that I can get in focus pictures with enough light that they don’t look awful.

Any tips for this novice? Game tonight!

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by raeleehansen

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Currently, they turn out very yellow/green and are often grainy or blurry.

There are 3 main things that are happening here. First, you said your photos were yellow/green. That's a white balance issue. Setting the white balance right helps make sure that colours are accurate. If you're shooting in Auto White Balance, the camera is probably guessing wrong for the types of lights that are in the gym. You could try setting your white balance manually (read your manual for how to change it), and taking some test shots before the game to see which has the best colours and using that one. The other option is to shoot in RAW and adjust it after the fact in something like photoshop.

In terms of grainy photos, that's because your ISO setting is high. And that goes along a little with the blurriness because in order for you to get a high enough shutter speed, you need to do something to make sure that the camera gets enough light. So, your photos will probably be grainy regardless at this point because that's one of the things that helps get enough light to take a shot.

In terms of practical settings, if you're struggling to figure out the settings, I would put the camera in S mode, then set the shutter speed to 1/200 and adjust from there. That might not be fast enough or it may not be bright enough, hence the need to adjust. Hope that helps a bit. It's pre-coffee advice, so it may be a little confusing.

[lputman]

For high school basketball, I usually shoot at 1/500 or 1/640 (if I can get there) shutter speed and use a fast piece of glass. I normally shoot with a 100 2.0, an 85 1.8 (if there's a Nikon one) works great on crop bodies for basketball. The ISO is going to have to be high to be able to shoot at a fast enough shutter speed and noise reduction in post is the norm. Since the light typically cycles in gyms, you will get color cast. Some say to shoot raw and take a sequence of shots in order to custom white balance to since you will usually catch the cycle of the lights. You'd have to shoot at a shutter speed of 1/60 to avoid the cycling; however, that is just too slow for basketball. The other option is to shoot with a speedlight to control the color issues.

[keithisnor]

I don't shoot basketball, but I do a lot of hockey and figure skating photography. Both are indoor and mean low lighting. The issue with the colour being yellow/green, sounds like a white balance issue, I find auto white balance workes well (even with .jpeg). The problem with the grain / blurry is slow glass. I am guessing that you are using auto settings on the camera. Try your AV mode. Set the ISO to at at least 1600, your pics will still be grainy but you might get rid of some of the blurryness. I find that I need to have a shutter speed of at least 1/500 to get the shot. Also if you can afford it get some good glass. I use a 70-200mm lense with an f2.8 apture. Hope this helps.