I was recently asked how I managed to get non-blurry basketball photos, so I thought I’d write a piece on how I shoot and what I look for. Some of the gyms I shoot in are fairly well lit but most of them are just horrible. This means I have to make the necessary adjustments to my camera settings in order to get an image that is both in focus and sharp. With modern digital cameras this means achieving a shutter speed of at least 1/800 second but preferably 1/1000.

So how do we get there?

The first thing I  do is set my camera in manual mode. The lighting in a gym is constant so once you have the exposure set there’s no need to change it. Next I need to dial in the right exposure setting which means balancing shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. ISO will be my main variable in this equation. After setting the shutter speed I dial in the aperture, I like to use my 70-200 f2.8 lens and set it at f3.2, as that provides a little more
depth of field than f2.8. From there I dial in the ISO in order to get a properly exposed histogram and that usually means setting the ISO somewhere between 3200 and 8000, although last weekend I had to crank it up to 12,800 (yes some gyms are terribly lit!).

I have my camera set on continuous auto focus, AI Servo on my Canon camera, and the shutter release is set on high speed continuous shooting.  

Now it’s just a question of sitting down and learning how to follow the play and frame the shot!