Friday night I was at the Burger Center covering the Austin HS v. Bowie HS basketball game for the Statesman.
The start of basketball season is a rough time for me. I’m mourning the loss of football season while trying to remember the ins and outs of shooting inside on a small court. I’m always a little rusty at the start of a new sports season, but after a game or two, I get back in to the swing of things.
If you excuse the lighting in the Burger Center, it’s actually a decent place to shoot. The court is down in a pit, so I can move around the outside of the court freely without blocking anyone’s view. Plus, since the stands start about five feet above the court, I can stand to the side of the basket and be at about eye level with the players as they shoot.
I used two cameras – a D700 with an 80-200mm f2.8 lens, and a D300 with a 24-70mm f2.8 lens. The D700 is great in low light, so I didn’t have any problems with freezing the action. The D300, however, only goes up to ISO 1600. That limits my shutter to 1/200 with an f-stop of 2.8. That shutter speed isn’t usually fast enough for action, but I stood near the basket and waited until the players were air-born to click the shutter. Their bodies don’t move as much or as quickly when they’re in the air. I still got some blur on their hands, but otherwise it made for a couple nice shots.
Anyway, enough shop talk, here are the pictures.
Bowie won 63-50 over Austin. Click here to read Danny Davis’s game story.