Lens for H.S. Basketball- now w/ pics

[Saab93Aero]

I have to shoot a H.S. basketball game coming up, and I will need to get a lens, im going to rent a 70-200mm vr, should I look to get any other lens to shoot along with the 70-200mm, or even to use insted of it?

*also assuming poor light with be included, w/ all h.s. sports.

[TROLL]

who are you shooting it for? i wouldnt pay to rent that lens unless the costs are at least covered by whoever you are shooting it for. and the vr doesnt hurt but you dont absolutely need it.
another lens that can be quite good for basketball is a 50mm f1.8... if you sit under the hoop its a good lens to shoot anything in the paint and even beyond.
if the light is really bad, even with a 2.8 or faster lens, you can use a flash to pop just a little bit of extra light onto your subjects. if you do this please gel the flash to match the ambient light of the gym, which will most likely be quite orange. if you're using a flash i'd aim to be only 1 or 2 stops max underexposed on ambient so that you can use the flash in a subtle way to bring your subject up to proper exposure.
try to keep your shutter speed at ~1/250th of a second, and shoot whatever wide open aperture is on your lens, and of course a useable ISO.

[97TurboDSM]

i agree with the 50 f1.8. i would say even an 85 f1.8(if nikon makes one) before the 70-200 f2.8. and TROLL, i'm a hotshoe flash noob so i have a question...can you tell the flash to match the color of light that the room is putting out?

[The Captain]

Good info. I tried shooting a college game (from the stands, so not the best positioning) w/ 17-50 f2.8. At 2.8 and 800iso, i still couldn't grab a clean photo. The motion was always slightly blurred.

[97TurboDSM]

it can definitely be done with an f2.8 lens, it just takes above average lighting in the gym. my high school gym has way better lighting than the gym does at west chester where i was for a while so it really just depends where you are.

[The Captain]

I've never really paid much attention to the lighting, but i have noticed flash bulbs in the rafters that randomly go off. So maybe the lighting does blow and the people actually shooting the game have that for help?

[Stanic]

For highschool games with cheap lighting its almost impossible to come out with great photos unless you strobe the place.
I shoot college games (with good lighting) with a 70-200 vr. Nikon makes a 85mm 1.8 and a 1.4. Sigma makes a 30mm 1.4 and a 50mm 1.4. Nikon also makes the 50mm 1.8.
I shoot wide open, about 1200 iso and 1/640 to freeze all of the action. I tried 1/500 and I had blur with the players' hands.

[TROLL]

Yeah indoor sports present a challenging situation because it combines low light with action. Low light forces you to slower shutter speeds (and max apertures) but action requires a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action.
The smaller the venue, the worse the light, traditionally. High school gymnasiums are a newspaper photographers arch nemesis because we spent a lot of time in them, and they're mostly all terrible. Some photographers light the entire gym to get around it which is great, but many photographers don't have the money or ability to do this.
Working more simply you can do what I suggested above and either just work with the ambient light if you've got enough to work with to get to maybe a worst case scenario of 1600 iso and 1/200th of a second at max aperture. If you're forced below 1/200th of a second your percentage of keepers will drop off quickly due to motion blur, and at this point I would highly recommend a hotshoe flash even if you have to fire it directly from on camera.

Now when it comes to flash, its a whole other aspect of photography. Good flash photography doesn't make it obvious that a flash was used... its because the flash is mixed well with the ambient light, both in exposure and color temperature. There's a lot to using flash that I couldn't possibly go over in a post here but a couple tips...

1) To properly match your flash's color to the ambient color you have to ID what kind of lighting is being used in the gym. Usually just looking at the lights will tell you if they are Tungsten or Flourescent, or you can take a photo with your WB set to sunlight and see what color cast it puts on the photo.
A lot of times there will be a strong orange cast (tungsten) in gyms, so what you'd do with this is put an orange correction gel over your flash (Nikon provides them with the SB800, or you can get a Rosco Gel Sample Pack for cheap or free, or I'm sure there are other options). Now both the ambient and the flash light should match somewhat close, with both being orange.
After you have this gel over your flash, now set your white balance to Tungsten preset, which should offset the orange cast and bring it back in line. Now check the color in your photos, it should hopefully be close to balanced. If not a custom white balance may be necessary, or a different color gel may be required over your flash.

2) Light falls off exponentially with distance, so even if your flash lights your subject well, you'll see that 10, 20, 100 feet behind them won't get much of the light emitted from your flash. This is the reason many flash photos have an essentiall black background, but it can be avoided.
To blend your flash as subtly as possible and help expose the background as well, you want to try to allow as much ambient light into the photo as possible... so even with a flash you'll still want to be at max aperture, a relatively high ISO, and not too high of a shutter speed. You have a little room to play here with the shutter speed and aperture, but you'll see there's a balance that you have to find with this to get decent image quality and a good exposure.
If your ambient exposure at 1600 ISO and 1/250th of a second at max aperture is only 1 or 2 stops underexposed, putting a flash on with TTL metering should work great... it will bring your subject up to proper exposure without much effort (as long as they arent too far away), and although the background will be slightly underexposed still (because of the light falloff i mentioned above), it will not be so noticeable to take away from the photo.
Again when doing this making sure your color temperature on the flash matches the ambient is very important... mixed lighting looks like crap and is for noobs!

[The Captain]

^^^ good info. I've learned pretty much everything i know from either TST or links from TST. Good stuff.

[TROLL]

Yeah I dont know how I feel about that response because its too long for most to want to read but its not long enough to be 100% complete, but hopefully it will at least introduce you to some of the things that need to be considered with flash...

[97TurboDSM]

wow, thank you for that mini tutorial.

[Saab93Aero]

wow, some good information in here now. i wasnt planning on using a flash since ive never used one, besides the built in flash on the camera.

but i just recently came across some of my dads old photography gear, free stuff, nothing too crazy tho.

Nikon N90
Sigma 24mm Super-wide f/2.8
Sigma 35-135mm f/3.5-4.5
Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3
Nikon Speedlight SB28

few questions,
-would the 24mm f/2.8 be any good for a bball game?

-also i actually have tried the SB28 on my d90 once, but it only works in M mode, and i just took a few shots around the house. but is it worthy of being used in the upcoming game?

[TROLL]

I think the 24 is going to be too wide to use for anything really. Most sports photos look good when they're tighter... my old editor used to always tell me to shoot "tighter tighter tighter!"
A 50mm is the shortest I'd use, and I'd sit under the basket if you're going to use it so you're close to the action. If you have a 70-200 you can sit out more toward the corner of the baseline and take advantage of zooming in and out. It still wont reach much farther than the 3 point line though, but thats where most of the action on your half of the court will be anyway.
And are you sure that the SB28 wont do TTL of some form with your camera? If so that'd be surprising... there should be a TTL mode option on it and I would think it would work fine. I would definitely bring it with you as an option, but first see if you cant get TTL to work with it. It can still be used on manual but that confuses things more and might just make for too much to think about with so much else already going on.

[97TurboDSM]

wait wait wait. why dont you use the 18-105 vr? that would be perfect for basketball..

[Stanic]

Originally Posted by 97TurboDSM

wait wait wait. why dont you use the 18-105 vr? that would be perfect for basketball..

the 18-105 is a "slow" lens and I am certain that any pictures produced from that lens in a high school gym will be unusable.

[97TurboDSM]

oh ok. so none of the lenses he has in his sig are at least f2.8?

[Saab93Aero]

yea no 2.8's all kit lenses, f/3.5-4.5/6.5

[97TurboDSM]

i still say find an 85 f1.8 or f1.4 if you can rent one for the day.

[TROLL]

again, why rent unless its a paid assignment? better to determine the gear that you need for the work you're doing, and if its important enough then buy it so you have it. and the 1.4 is definitely not necessary, although i believe its a 1.2 from canon and its obscenely expensive.

[97TurboDSM]

well if he's only doing one basketball game there would be no reason for him to buy. from the looks of it, he doesnt have any gear that would suffice in a gym setting. renting at this point seems to be the best option. If he can find a place that will do a rent to buy(i know some do) then he can rent it for the game and if he likes it, he can purchase it later.