Sunday, February 3, 2013

Basketball Photography (Again)

Splitting Two Defenders by Wayne-K
Splitting Two Defenders, a photo by Wayne-K on Flickr.

My son retired his basketball shoes this past year -- and I thought I retired from basketball photography. But, as Justin Bieber would say, “never say never.” We headed to Harvest Park Middle School today to watch Angel play in her CCOP basketball game. I dusted off my Nikon D80 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 and proceeded to shoot a number of poorly framed, blurry photos. Sports photography is different than my standard work and it took a few minutes to knock off the rust. To make things more challenging, the gymnasium was dark and the D80 image quality isn’t very good at ISO 1600 and above. This forced me to shoot at ISO 1600, with a slower shutter speed I would have liked at f/2.8. After shooting two periods with these settings, I decided to switch from my 70-200mm f/2.8 to my 50mm f/1.8. Shooting the 50mm at f/1.8 allowed me to shoot with a faster shutter speed and this lens also offered much faster auto-focus speeds than the bigger zoom lens.

I’ve progressed to the point in my photography where I tend not to have gear envy or GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). My D80 (and FM2) suits my needs for the vast majority of the time, but low-light sports is one situation where I feel limited by my gear. Regardless, I had a good time coming out of semi-retirement and doing a bit of basketball photography.