Basketball Gym Question

[Rob4bama]

Can decent basketball pictures be made in a "average" high school gym without strobes or flashes? I have a canon 60d, sigma 17-50 f.28, sigma 70-200 f2.8, and canon 50mm f1.8. I can be anywhere in the gym because I teach there. Thanks!

 

[480sparky]

It's not about your camera. It's all about the light in the gym. You may have crappy lights from the '60s, or dazzling lights installed 6 months ago.

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

Gyms can vary widely in the amount of natural and artificial light. Best thing you can do is take in your camera during the light conditions you expect to shoot in and look at your light meter.

 

[Rob4bama]

We just had new fluorescent put in to our gym. When you say "look at your light meter", what do you mean? I'm relatively new to photography. Thanks again!

 

[rexbobcat]

I have gotten shots in a decently lot gym with 70-200 f/2.8 and an 85mm f/1.8

 

[scorpion_tyr]

If the lighting is decent f/2.8 and ISO 3200 should work, if the lighting stinks you might want to see if you can rent or borrow an 85mm f/1.8 USM. You can try the nifty fifty but the focusing will probably be too slow.

 

[Seefutlung]

Typically, yes. At ISO 1600/3200, your f/2.8 lenses should do well at about 1/500 or better.

Gary

 

[Rob4bama]

Awesome!!! Thanks guys. They should be holding practices soon so I can practice but its usually during the day. We have windows at the top of the gym so I figured that would make a difference since all games are played at night.

 

[Rob4bama]

#34 looks like a monster btw.

 

[Tony S]

It all depends on the light in the gym like stated before. In a lot of high school gyms you can be hard pressed to shoot ISO 3200 and still get a shutter speed up at 1/500 and get good exposures. You will also run into some issues with auto focusing and tracking focus if you use it, dim light can really throw it off without moving to an upper level body. You will only know by going to the gym you will be shooting in to see what exposures work or talk with someone who has actually taken pictures there.

I shoot a lot of high school basketball and have some pretty dark gyms where ISO 6400 with 1/320 will barely get the exposures close using a 1D class camera. They are real caves. After shooting in those getting ISO3200 and anything above 1/400 is a treat until the late rounds of state playoffs where they play in the best gyms and move to larger venues with amazing lighting (like Division 1 college gyms and pro arenas).

 

[Seefutlung]

#34 looks like a monster btw.

Mamadou Ndiaye, a 7-foot-5 Brethren Christian High School basketball player, is considered to be the tallest basketball player in the United States at any level. I shot him when Brethren HS (Huntington Beach), played Whitney HS (Cerritos). He sorta dominated the game and will be back for his senior year.

Gary

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

^^^^^ Lol, imbalanced!

 

[bratkinson]

As the preceding pictures show, no-flash photography in a gym shouldn't be a problem with fast lenses such as a 2.8 and faster.

My concern is white balance. Lighting varies from sunlights, incandescent, florescent, sulfur-vapor (orangish), mercury (bluish), and these days, halogen (still quite expensive at present). Each of them can easily 'trick' the auto-white-balance in any camera, in my estimation.

Definitely get familiar with using a white balance card and setting Custom White Balance in your camera for each gymnasium, and perhaps each time of day, if there is a large number of windows/sunlights that could affect color balance. If you shoot in RAW format, you can easily do white balance correction in post processing rather than in-camera using CWB. But you'll still need to take a picture of a white balance card in RAW format to set the balance in post processing.