I still have not figured out which of my two lenses is best for shooting basketball games. I have now shot two b-ball assignments, a game last November and one this past week. I have used both of my lense, changing them hurriedly every fifteen minutes or so. I have the two most basic Nikon lenses for the D40x, the Nikon 55-200mm f4-5.6G ED AF-S DX Nikkor Zoom Lens and the kit lens, the Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S DX Nikkor Zoom Lens.

Wider Lens

The wider lens is better when the player are under the net, but not so good at any distance. As you can see here, the wider lens requires too much cropping. Cropped images have too much grain at high ISOs in these dim conditions. With the wide lens, it is also difficult to capture the emotional moments. You may want to catch that close up, but you can not get on the court.

Longer Lens

The longer lens gets action that is further away. With this lens, there is less need to crop the image later. On the filp side, some of the action is almost always cut off in the frame. Also, with one strobe, I often find myself shooting stuff outside the range of the light.

Last night, I spent most of the first half with the longer lens and most of the second half with the wider. I can see why professionals have two bodies hung around their necks. Switching lenses is a costly waste of time.

Any thoughts?

Tags: 55mm, assignment, basketball, image, images, nikon lenses, strobe, zoom

This entry was posted on February 13, 2009 at 12:12 pm and is filed under tim's photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.