Toby

I agree with everything Tom said and will add a few comments. First your lens may be a bit long of you are court side. On the other hand you should be able to shoot the far end. I prefer a 24-70 f2.8. I shoot manual and locked in ISO. After you determine the setting you need each shot should be pretty close to the same. If noise is a problem shoot a little darker and clean up in LR after.

ORpilot Loc: Prineville, Or

I recently did a private lesson with a student at a high school wrestling match. I am a Sony user. As previously mentioned, the lighting will be bad. Let the ISO go auto. Set the camera to "S" and set the shutter speed to no slower that 1/500 sec. You may like 1/1000 to stop more action. your 70-200 f2.8 will be fine. or you may want the 24-70 f2.8 if you can get close to the side lines. You lighting is anyones guess. The gym were I was teaching had mixed florescent, sodium vapor and mercury vapor lights with a few burned out lights. Auto White Balance may be your best choice but go ahead and flip through the white balance choices to see what you like. Make sure you have Flicker turned on. That setting makes sure the camera fires at the moment lights are not off. You may have to lighten up your exposure compensation +.5 to+1. You may also set the focus to "C" for continuous focusing. Set the Shot mode to "hi" to get those rapid fire shots. You can try eye fallow but subject fallow would most likely work better in the low lighting. Or just set center zone focus. Once you find the setting combination you like, go ahead and put it in your of your "C" custom buttons. That way you will have it already set for the next game. Shoot a few pre-game shots to adjust everything. You have a great camera to shoot the game. Sony's live view makes shooting so easy.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

1/500 SS minimum for basketball, but you can often get by with 1/250 for wrestling...

tgreenhaw

Plenty of good suggestions here IMHO. Only thing I haven't seen is practice a bit beforehand on your settings for taking multiple shots by holding down the shutter button. Also bring extra memory and battery just in case.

pego101

I use 1/320 @ 3200 iso shutter priority

Mongo Loc: Western New York

I have shot indoor basketball games for 50+ years. Recently, I shoot more handheld video from the stands to make training DVDs for the coaches. Generally, I shoot that from high in the stands, standing up, without a tripod.

However, my early shooting was for school paper, yearbook and the local papers printed over 60 of my game shots.

With today's equipment, try to use 1000 to 2000 for your shutter speed. Sometimes, there are benefits of blurred 1/60 sec shots of dunks, but generally motion stopped shots work best, and people like them the best.

For focusing, I set the camera to totally manual focus. Find the shutter speed that snaps the instant you press. Turn on the noise so that you can hear it, at least at first. No real point in multiple frame shots, but you can try them. I try to pump each shot off discretely. Get the timing of the players, and mark prefocus points on your lens if you can. If you are under the basket, the three point ring, and then about 2 feet after the basket. That will help get close on the focus in advance. Avoid focusing with the action, because you won't get the shots off while watching and focusing. At least I can't.

Exposures are a proposition. Things vary with jersey color and lighting, but in general I don't worry about precise exposure. Over a stop is better than under.

If you automatic settings for focus and exposure, you will get delayed captures, which will mess things up. Run manual exposure and manual focus. "Silk" or acetate bandage tape is good for marking focus points on, and does not leave residue on equipment.

If shooting from the stands, the game is different. Lead your subjects in the direction they will head. Where you can, get side line players in the frame, and coaches in the frame, even if out of focus. You are trying to tell a story, and they are part of it, even though not the focal point (no pun intended).

No athletic director that I can think of told me I couldn't use flash. One coach, for the other team recently demanded that I no use flash. I politely told him that if that is what he wanted, I would not. But I use flash about 3% of the time, and it is usually for awards shots during the event, to assure fill on the faces.

Most of the games I shoot the refs all know me. The ADs generally know me. But they do chase people off the of the court. One way I have dealt with this in basketball and in other sports is to have the coach for the team I am there to capture say a word to the athletic director. The "security" people will get told, probably by body language, and I don't get bothered.

You may get allot of requests from parents. When I did VHS and DVDs for coaches, I would tell them to get me a blank, and I would copy the game they want on to it. I gave allot of media to coaches, but I think parents gave me as much. If there were parents who I knew were financially strapped, I would just say sure, and use my media.

I had four kids who played basketball, winning state championship and exciting things like that.

For lenses, I usually have two bodies, one with a 135 and the other with something like a 200. A long time ago, I used a Vivitar 70-210 varifocal lens. Not as nice as a true zoom, but it worked. Except in when I was in high school, I could get any lens I needed, or bodies from work, so I would switch up the equipment sometimes. I definitely use a UV filter because there are aerosols in the air, and plan on getting bumped a few times if you are on the court. It just happens. Usually from a ball which you lost sight of.

chasgroh Loc: Buena Park, CA

General comment: don't use auto *anything*...figger it out...gyms are good and bad but mostly, at least, consistent. That said, light cycling can be a real problem if your camera can't deal with it (mine can, but there are still, sometimes, noticeable differences shot to shot). There was a comment about bursting: I say watch the game and your subject's involvement, and take a shot. *That* said, personally I might stay on low burst so I can get a 3 shot sequence, but I've developed a "feel" so can stay single shot until I need it. Just my .02, lots of good advice here (other than the "auto" recommendations...not my cup of tea).

Mongo Loc: Western New York

On the burst...good idea if it works for you. I could never get it to do so, dating back to film autowinders. The opportunities don't have the same sequence. In something like cross country, it works great. Basketball just seems not the same rhythm.

If anyone has used burst shots with basketball, with good success, I would love to hear about it. Like what they do, and how it works. I just couldn't get it to click. Oh no, not another unintentional pun!

chasgroh Loc: Buena Park, CA

Haha, good on you. I'm sure the body has something to do with it, but, I dunno, I haven't shot alot of Basketball. I have, however, done many indoor color guard shows here and the technique proves out. Of course, my "touch" isn't perfect so I get some doubles where I didn't want 'em. YMMV...

Benton Park

Now retired, worked for a large mid-western daily newspaper for almost 40 years, both as a staff photographer and picture editor. My style of shooting HS basketball is as follows

#1 Can stop High School sports @ 1/250. I used 1/500 and higher for professionals.
#2 The last place that one wants to be is sitting on the floor at the end zone (on the opposite side of the basket from the cheerleaders. While gyms are different, I would always find a place up in the stands where I was at eye level with the rim of the basket . If possible I would get up higher to look down on the basket. Also I would look for a place to shot from that would give me a relatively clear background
#3 Take a piece of gaffer tape and tape your 70-200 f 2.8 lens at the 200 mm length. Then shoot at
1/250 and f 2.8 and adjust the iso for a good image. In the old days ( with Tri-X ) I would adjust my development.
#4 While I use Canons , so don't know Sonys , I moved the auto focus control to a back button using a custom function ( Shutter and Focus are then separated ) . This is what many of the other professionals I worked with did . The I would pre -focus on the basket rim. and while I used continious focus , I had control of when it was on.
#4 The advantage of this style is that when players are looking up ( and one is shooting down ) the light is good and there is plenty of action around the basket. The last thing I wanted was to shoot from the floor looking up at badly light faces and have some of the Gym's lights for the ceiling in the photo
#5 The truth is that with the cameras today with their faster motors and the digital revolution that lets one shoot a much higher iso , it is easier to shoot sports today than when all we had was Tri-X . So as long one experiments to find different ways to capture the action, so their photos will stand out.

Mongo Loc: Western New York

Gyms are on the average much better lit today than 50 years ago. Even at smaller not so we'll to do private schools. In high school I shot Tri-X by the 100 foot bulk roll, and being in Rochester there were dads who would manage to get several 100 foot rolls for us to load from.

Basketball was almost always developed with Diafine and sometimes pushed further ASA 1600 and pushed to ASA 2000. Acufine was used for other indoor sports like wrestling. (ASA 1000). I probably got carried away with pushing because I even push processed with D-76, which we had in abundance being a Kodak product.

Good pointers.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Ah yes, the days of pushing Tri-X to 1600 with Acufine & Diafine (and yes, even D-76 when that was all we had). Now that we have cameras that deliver excellent results, even at ISO 12,800, those that grew up with digital don't know how lucky we are today. How did we ever manage to get all those good shots? BTW, you can still buy Acufine - I have some in my darkroom right now.

Jaackil Loc: Massachusetts

I have used it and use it all the time for basketball hockey and lacrosse. But I don’t spray and pray. I try to anticipate the action and hold the shutter down through the action. The key to bursts is knowing the sport and anticipating the action. The problem with trying to time the perfect shot is you can’t time it perfectly enough. You can try to anticipate a players movement but what if they hesitate? What if they don’t do what you think they are going to do. With basketball for example how do you perfectly time a players release at the night of a jump shot while looking through the view finder? How do you know when the most dramatic moment in the shot is? With hockey it moves faster. I want to catch the whole sequence of a player shooting the puck. But I don’t know how to anticipate the most dramatic point in the shot because it changes. Sometime it is when the puck is coming off the blade of the stick. But sometimes the players head is down and all I get is the top of the helmet. So maybe the best most dramatic shot is at the begining when the stick is really bending and the player is looking up at where he is shooting now I have stick bend puck and the players face and eyes. And it varies from shot(hockey not camera) to shot. That is why having the sequence gives me more oppertunity to get a keeper. Although basketball dosent move as fast in a shot sequence you are trying to guess exactly when the players face is not blocked by his arms the ball coming up, him blinking etc. I would say if you shout a burts of 5-7 while a player is shooting you have a better chance of getting a good shot than trying to time it and get everything to line up. Digital film is cheap. Really no reason not to click away. But don’t spray and pray know the action and what you are trying to capture.

Jaackil Loc: Massachusetts

I can not believe all the responses about using a flash. Please do not ever use a flash during a game. It’s not 1942. Even the most low end DSLR’s can handle enough iso for gyms today. Flash will get you kicked out and deservedly so. It also makes you look like someone who has no clue what they are doing and shows no respect for the game. It screams all I care about is my photography and getting the shot not about the game. You might as well walk onto the court and stop the action and pose the players. Remember whether you are a parent friend or relative Please act like a pro, you are there to record the action as an inconspicuous bystander not be part of the show. But the most important reason is flashes can and will be distracting to the players and spectators and will affect the game.

cedymock Loc: Irmo, South Carolina

My 2 cents may be highly criticized but here goes. My first question would be who are you taking these photos for, family or media publication (for school, newspaper, magazine) I feel there is a difference. Media (smallest depth of field) family (most depth of field light will allow). My reasoning came after I took photos (for family) of my oldest grandson when he was 5 years old. When he look at the photos he asked me why all his friends looked fuzzy, that is what was important to him his friends. Many of these children will be playing together until they get out of high school. They want their friends when young and memories when they get older.
markngolf comments about arriving early for warm up is a must especially for 4, 5 and 6 year olds, may be the only good shots you may get. At that age it looks more like football than basketball after the game starts. Hope not to offend anyone with my opinion.