Originally posted by Bob Harris I didn't realize until I took photos of my grandson playing basketball inside what a tough job it is to get a decent photo. You seem to be mastering that Larry, these are all great, congrats to you.
Thanks Bob.
It did take a few tries to figure it out, but fortunately I have to do a few of these events a year so I had many chances to practice.
A few key items are:
Use a fast lens with a sharp sweet spot at around F4, so that you can keep shutter speed up without impacting ISO too much. ( I use a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 OS for the close shots and a Tamron 28-75 F2.8 for the wide shots)
The F4 setting allows enough depth of field without sacrificing light too much. If you try to close down more for more depth of field overall IQ may suffer due to higher ISO or slower shutter needed.
A shutter speed around 1/500 will be needed if the action is fast, unless you like motion blur.
Set the white balance in camera to match the lighting if you want to do jpeg. I do so I can maximize frames per second bursts.
Allow the metering to be a slight bit negative, this way you can get higher shutter speed. With the K-5 and K-3 the dynamic range is good so I can pull the exposure back up in post.
Good luck with your grandson sporting shots, if he is like my grandkids who enjoy sports we will be doing this a long time