Wazopia: The Web Blog of Jim Fisher: First Picts: LeBron vs. Carmelo

My favorite sport is basketball. I played in high school and college. Later on I played in some over-the-hill leagues. In college (Kent State) my degree was in photojournalism. I worked as a "stringer" for AP and would shoot Cavs games back at the old Richfield Coliseum. It was tougher sport to shoot back then because the lighting was always lousy. Today, the lighting is much better, the shooters have remote transmitters for strobes and the digital cameras have automatic "white" balancing built-in.

My seat was about 80-100 feet from the floor. That's a big difference from being on the floor under the hoop and using fast 35mm or 50mm lenses. To see the difference check out these great picts of the same game by Roadell Hickman from the Plain Dealer.

The ISO was 1600 and the exposure was set at 1/640 f4.0 shooting RAW. The lens was an older Canon 70-210 F4.0 EF (not an ESM). The focus was center spot and AI Servo.

Overall, the compositions are pretty good with some nice action shots and facial expressions but there is too much "noise" from going 1600 ISO and the autofocus on my lens couldn't keep up with the action.