Indoor Basketball Shooting

[MaxxFusion]

I just got a xsi kit before xmas. I have 3 lenses. They are the 1.8 50mm, 18-55mm kit, and 55-250mm. Last night i was using the kit lens and had the camera in sports mode. A lot of the pics came out blurry. I am not sure what i am doing wrong. It seemed that most of the shots that were blurry were more of the action shots. Since the games are for 7 year old we are able to sit on the sidelines and not in bleachers so i am fairly close.

[David Metsky]

You probably need a faster lens. Indoor sports in notoriously difficult to shoot. For now, set the ISO higher (1600) and open the aperture on your lens as wide as possible and see if that helps. You'll want to end up with a shutter speed at 1/250 at minimum.

[jwhite]

You might try the 50mm at f/2.0. High school (and elementary) gyms are fairly dark. I would also try manual mode because you will have more control. I either shoot with my 85mm f/1.8 @ 2.0 or 70-200mm/f2.8 @ 2.8. Normally I'm at 1/320 or 1/400 at ISO 1600 or 3200. I like 1600 the best because of noise, but then the shutter speed as to come down. Just play around with the shutter speed and ISO and look at the histogram to see where things lay. I shoot in RAW so I have a lot of room for error.

Since you are shooting 7 year olds, you might be able to lower the shutter speed more since I imagine they aren't as fast as high schoolers who I normally shoot. What were the shutter speeds for the ones that were blurry? Looking back at your old pics and the EXIF will help with future shots and knowing what to improve upon.

I also started shooting with the 40D as opposed to the 5D. I thought it would be better at sports because of the 6.3fps, but the 5D worked pretty good because of the increase number of AF points. I wish I now had a 7D so I could shoot at ISO 6400 with more AF points. Oh well...

Good luck

Jason