Overthehill1

And naturally, she asked me, who knows nothing about them. Her 14 year old son is 6'3 and growing, and plays in an advanced youth league. She currently uses her I-phone but is looking for something more versatile, but not as complicated as a DSLR. Budget is in the $350 to $450 range. Thanks.

ELNikkor

Start with the basics: 1/500 sec or faster shutter, f2.8 wide open, zoomable from wide to mild telephoto, point follow-focus, 6 frames per second, ISO 12,500 with minimal noise. (ie- Tell her the point-and-shoot that fits her requirements has not yet been invented, but they're working on it.)

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

Compared to most other cameras, I don't think a DSLR camera is really anymore complicated. Matched with an appropriate zoom lens for the type of photography she wants to do, and she will be fine.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Unless her iPhone is really old, you are not going to find anything better for $350 to $450.

For $475 the Sony HX-99 might be a contender because it has some telephoto ability. Basketball is tough because it is indoors and therefore "low light" or at least bad light.

Najataagihe

Used Nikon D3400 with 55-200mm VR lens on eBay.

Relatively cheap, easy to use, and good high ISO performance.

Help her shop!

User ID

Not likely to significantly beat a good phone with that budget.

Terkat

Good morning "Over".

I usually shoot with a D850 and D3x but invested in a "point & shoot a few years ago, It is the Canon Powershot G9-X. Absolutely a terrific little camera. Moderate zoom (wide angle / telephoto f2.0-f4.9 - 28mm - 84mm). Capable of 6 fps with a 3" screen. It's always in my bag and continues to be used frequently. HIGHLY recommended!!

All the best.

Terry

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

It's likely going to be difficult to come up with a good solution in this budget range. I've been working with a parent at school to develop a good plan and technique for photographing her daughter's drill team, which has been performing in gyms and auditoriums this spring. She has a nice D3100 and a couple of consumer grade lenses. As a nurse, she has no difficulty learning new technical things about using her camera, but she also has no interest in spending a lot of money on faster, heavier lenses.

There are two problems to overcome. One is exposure, but the big one is focus. Exposure can be solved, but D3xxx and D5xxx cameras have only one command dial, meaning that manual mode isn't going to work for action photography. We have been working on manual focus, which is going to solve her last barrier, but most point and shoot cameras do not offer a manual focus option. And most of them are designed so that they must achieve focus first, before even starting to work on exposure.

The D3100 goes to ISO 3200, which does not produce acceptable results when printed. 1600 is marginal, but 800 is really the cutoff. So we are working on techniques built around capturing shots at the top of a leap, or other times when motion has slowed or stopped momentarily.

I bought an expensive point and shoot at work before I retired. The purpose included documenting people and machines in operation. It was never suitable for that, and our machinery was much slower than either basketball or drill team. While there are options that mat be partially successful, it is unlikely that your niece is ever going to be happy by folliwing this path.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Try one hands on. Most all have a lag between shots, not capable of fast burst shots to catch the action. Some may have a special mode for this, like 3 or so rapid shots. Otherwise they’re slow writing to the SD card. At least that’s been my experience. An entry level crop frame DSLR in your price range would be better, maybe with a moderate zoom kit lens.

bnsf

Sony makes the best bridge camera available so she should take a look at them then decide what she wants to do.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

You are asking about one of the more difficult aspects of photography. Poor lighting, fast action, and halogen/LED/Quartz lighting which produce flicker.

While a fast lens is great for focusing and composition, it is not a good choice for shooting sports - a lens used wide open generally does not look so great until you reduce the aperture. A fast lens (F1.4) used at F2.8 or F4 will produce considerably better image quality than a lens that starts at F2.8 or F4 - when used at similar apertures. Photographers will often recommend fast lenses because they let in more light, ignoring the practical issues that will have an impact when used. Fast lenses are expensive and bigger/heavier.

Full frame cameras do have a considerable edge over smaller sensor cameras. Newer cameras have anti-flicker modes, and advanced focus systems that are well-matched to the task of shooting sports. But they are heavier, more expensive and bulkier.

There are some cameras that "can" work, such as a Sony RX10M4, but they are still questionable in poor light and they do not have an anti-flicker mode.

DSLR or Mirrorless - it is no more complicated than using an iPhone. The setup has more variables, but once the camera settings are performed, it's just point and shoot - and the camera does the rest.

So, for $350--$450, it is not too likely she will close to her goal. And a low cost, small sensor camera is NOT going to work - mainly because the autofocus systems are not going to be up to the task of shooting active sports. Only the newer ones, with hybrid focusing systems, like the Sony RX10 and RX100 series cameras and others that I am not familiar with, will work. Slow focusing systems are frustrating to use for anything more than landscapes, street photography, travel, and selfies.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

Used Sony A6000 with Sigma 60mm f2.8 and use Clear Image Zoom .......

User ID

Sounds good. The a6000 was a quantum leap over the Nex series ans with the 60./2.8 should produce a useful keeper ratio without busting the budget. Could also consider the apsc 50/1.8 to keep the AF well fed with photons. And the CIZ handles the "zoom problem" with no compromise. You get a 2.8 or even a 1.8 zoom for free and you still have 24MP before you crop !

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

There are a lot of problems shooting basketball and most point-n-shoot cameras will simply not do well.

You need quick autofocus, a bright lens, relatively fast shutter speeds, usable higher ISOs and, ideally, some means of dealing with the fluctuating lighting in most gymnasiums.

I'm going to focus on Canon gear because that's the system I know best. There may be some other manufacturers' cameras with similar capabilities.

Among Canon I'd recommend a used or refurbished Rebel T7i (800D outside N. America), EOS 77D or EOS 80D... Or a current Rebel T8i or EOS 90D.

Here is why:

All these cameras have Canon's 45-point AF system that's fairly fast and capable. All 45 of those AF points are a higher performance "dual axis/cross" type. The 80D and 90D have the best performing version of this AF system. You can use a single point (most accurate but most difficult), small groups of points (useful for fast action, though less reliable), or enable all 45 points (least reliable). While there are other Canon cameras with even better AF for fast basketball action (7D Mark II, 1DX Mark III, R6, R5, R3), the above models are reasonably affordable AND have a lot of automation features to make them easier to use. The 80D and 90D also have a "true" pentaprism that makes for a little bit bigger and brighter optical viewfinder than the T7i, 77D or T8i, all of which use a "penta-mirror" to save weight and cost.

The T7i, 77D and T8i have a fastest shutter speed of 1/4000... while the 80D or 90D both feature an even faster top speed of 1/8000. Fast shutter speeds are necessary to freeze sports action. You will find many point-n-shoots max out at 1/2000 shutter speed. That may be sufficient, but there will be times when even faster would be better.

All these cameras use 24MP APS-C size sensors, except for the 90D which uses an even higher resolution 32.5MP APS-C sensor (the highest resolution of any camera with this size sensor). 24MP is more than enough for sports photography and APS-C sensors are considerably larger than what is used in most point-n-shoot cameras. This allows higher ISOs to be used before digital noise becomes a problem (still bigger "full frame" sensors are even better in this respect, but make for bigger, heavier and more expensive cameras and lenses).

Canon T7i, 77D and T8i all can shoot continuously at 6 frames per second. 80D can do 7 fps and 90D is even faster at 10 fps (faster with locked AF, but that's not something you want to do when shooting sports). Continuous shooting rates are important to catch fast action... up to a point. They can cause you to take an awful lot of images that will need to be downloaded, sorted and worked with later. But a short half second burst of 3, 4 or 5 shots can capture the "peak moment" of action. This goes hand in hand with "shutter lag", which is the time between when the photography presses the release button to take the shot and when the shutter will actually release. There can be quite a lag with a point-n-shoot, which can cause photographers to miss a lot of fast action shots. DSLRs and mirrorless cameras can do better, but there's some variation among them, too. For example, the Canon 80D's shutter lag is a fast 0.060 second. The less advanced T7i is good, but is about 30% slower with 0.079 second shutter lag. Or a faster 0.052 second is possible with the 7D Mark II or even 0.038 sec with the most advanced 1DX Mark III (Note: All these are "optimized" shutter lag, tested with autofocus turned off. This is used for camera to camera comparisons. When AF metering are active, as they usually will be, there is always some additional delay.)

Yet another feature that's found on all the above Canon cameras is "flicker reduction". This was first introduced on the Canon 7D Mark II that I use and it's a real game changer when shooting "under the lights". The type of lighting used in many sports venues actually cycles on and off very rapidly... 60 times per second. We don't see it with our eyes... but our cameras sure do! In cameras without flicker reduction it causes A LOT of your images to be incorrectly exposed.... badly underexposed. Previously the only solution was to use a 1/30 or slower shutter speed... but this doesn't work for sports photography. You need faster shutter speeds to freeze the movement of the players, balls, bats and such. When shooting sports the best we could do was take lots and lots of extra shots, knowing that around half of them would be badly underexposed and a lot would be unusable.

Flicker reduction largely solves this. It detects the light cycling and times each shutter release to coincide with peak output. Using it I now see very few poorly exposed images, even when shooting familiar locations where the lighting gave me trouble before. Canon has put Anti-Flicker into almost all their cameras since 2014 when the 7D Mark II was introduced (the more entry-level T7, SL2/SL3 and, other than the M6 Mark II, M-series mirrorless don't have it). You can see more about this feature here: https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Cameras/Anti-Flicker-Mode.aspx I know Nikon has a similar feature in a few of their cameras too.... Don't know about Sony or other manufacturers.

The lens for this purpose is going to be more challenging. An ideal lens has high performance autofocus and a large aperture to be usable with a fast shutter speed in limited lighting conditions. A zoom can be desirable for the versatility, but prime lenses can offer a larger aperture in smaller size, lighter weight and lower cost. The "kit" lenses offered with all the above cameras can be good, but are NOT large aperture and many don't feature the fastest type of focusing motors.

The most ideal zoom lenses available for basketball that can fit the above Canon DSLRs:

- Sigma 50-100mm f/1.8 DC HSM... great focal length range for basketball... over a stop larger aperture than other zooms... no image stabilization... pretty big & pretty heavy and $1000.

- Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS USM III.... superb lens, pro build... slightly longer than usual needs for basketball... "only" f/2.8.... large, heavy and over $2000 (Sigma & Tamron versions cost a lot less).

- Tamron SP 24-70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2.... good lens... slightly short for basketball... "only" f/2.8... moderately heavy, $1200 (less than the Canon & Sigma versions).

- Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM... great lens... most compact and lightest weight... "only" f/2.8... pretty short for basketball... most affordable under $900 new, widely avail. used for less.

All the above have their manufacturer's fastest type of auto focusing motor: Canon USM, Sigma HSM and Tamron USD.

Prime lenses I would use to shoot basketball are 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8 and 135mm f/2. While less versatile, these are one to two stops brighter than f/2.8 aperture zooms. They also are typically a lot smaller, lighter and less expensive. I would also consider using 35mm and 100mm lenses. And I'd look for those same fast focusing motors in these primes.

Ultimately lenses for sports ain't cheap. If willing to consider refurbished (direct from Canon USA, same warranty and little difference from new, except for the plain brown box). When they are in stock, refurbished copies of most of the above recommended models will cost less than most of the above lenses: https://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/cameras/refurbished-eos-interchangeable-lens-cameras#facet:-81026611110012132791101081213275105116115,-810369798332555568,-810369798332564868,-8103697983328210198101108328455105&productBeginIndex:0&orderBy:&pageView:grid&pageSize:& For used cameras, check out B&H Photo, Adorama, KEH.com, MPB.com, usedphotopro.com (Roberts Camera), and others.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

But can you get any of this for $350 - $450?

All of these recommendations are excellent - but the budget is the killer.