Lens Extender

ISO Settings Used for Indoor Sports Photography

Indoor photography of sports like basketball can be challenging when you cannot use flash. School gyms are notoriously dark and less than optimal for sports photography. The only technique available for capturing good images in this circumstance involve using the high ISO setting on your digital SLR.  Check out some examples of this here.

Setting Up the Sports Cover Shot

I recently tried to re-create the 2009 Sports Illustrated college basketball cover shot for the local high school varsity basketball program booklet.  I didn't have a lot of time to capture the shot. But I'd call this effort, "Not bad, but not great either.

Optimal Settings for Non-Flash Basketball Photography

This photos was taken in completely manual mode with my D300 and 85mm f/1.8 lens attached.  I used this hoops game to experiment a little.  First the aperture and shutter speed were set manually (f/2.2 and 1/800s respectively).  I chose f/2.2 aperture to give myself a little better advantage at getting more of the action in focus given the depth of field if shot at f/1.8.  Because of this, I had to manually crank up the ISO to 1600 (I normally shoot in auto ISO, but decided against that for this session).  I chose 1/800s through experience as a fast enough shutter speed to stop most of the action for decent photos. Before the game I took a few sample photos to check the histogram for under or over-exposure at the above settings. The histogram seemed ok, but this photos is a little more underexposed than I would like.  Assuming that this might happen, I added +2/3 exposure bias to the D300 while shooting.  Maybe I should have added more exposure bias.  I also adjusted the automatic white balance to the tungsten setting to counteract the funny colors resulting from the lighting in this particular gym.  To me the colors in this photo seem ok.  The last setting I changed was to shoot in Raw (NEF in Nikon vernacular) as opposed to high quality jpeg.