One Game at a Time

After Monday's auditions of the Wizards Dancers I was looking forward to some basketball on Tuesday night.

During the day on Monday I thought about a 400mm lens and on Monday night I decided to purchase a used 400mm/f2.8 AF-S lens from a photographer on SportsShooter. Unfortunately PayPal is extremely slow in moving money from our bank account into our PayPal account so my seller probably won't ship it until next week.

Al's still on vacation this week so he offered the Mystics shoot to me. I was looking forward to it because shooting basketball is so much fun. And since I was in Verizon Center the evening before I had some time to think about what settings to use for tonight's game.

I reached Verizon Center early and had plenty of time to get my laptop set up and to take a few test shots from out on the corner. Unfortunately the network configuration changed again. In the past the media relations people have posted the username and password for the network on the dry erase board inside of Verizon Center.

Eventually one of the technicians came by and helped another reporter with his network settings. While he was helping I listened in and applied the same settings to my environment. That's one of the nice benefits of being a full time software engineer and system administrator: I understand a lot about computers, networking, and wireless. As a result I'm pretty good at getting my laptop working (as long as I have the proper username and password!)

I headed out to the court and noticed that the other photographers (AP for the most part) had already claimed their spots on the close side of the court. Rather than actually being out there waiting for the game to start they instead plunked down their makeshift seats. This was kind of frustrating because I was hoping to get a good spot on that side of the court. But there wasn't any room for me because it had already been claimed.

I made my way down to the far end of the court and claimed my spot out as far from under the basket as possible. I'm still shooting with my 70-200 lens and it's really difficult to shoot under the basket at 70mm. It's just too close for many of the shots that I'm taking these days.

I spoke with another photographer named Carroll who was there for a friend who couldn't make it. He was shooting with a Canon and he sat next to me out on the 3 point line. He was telling me that he shoots a few Maryland games but mostly shoots up in the Baltimore area. I mentioned this blog and the DC Sports Box and invited him to come take a look at my photos.

A fan in the crowd came up to me and asked if he could purchase some of my photos. I said that I didn't know the regulations regarding the selling of our photos but that I would ask somebody and get back to him. I didn't think that we could use our photos for commercial purposes and it turns out that I I was right: credentialed photographers can only use their photographs for editorial purposes.

I decided to try to shoot this game at ISO800. ISO1000 is pretty noisy, and Verizon is really bright. I've also had a lot of success at lightening my photos in Aperture in post processing. I decided not to use EV correction like the last game. I wanted to try just using ISO800 and 1/400th second shutter speed with 0 EV correction to see how it looked.

It turned out pretty well. I didn't have any problems with stopping action at 1/400th second, and the ISO800 is certainly less noisy than ISO1000. I'm going to continue using ISO800 and 1/400th for my next shoots, but I may use some EV correction just to see how it performs.

I stuck with group weighted autofocus and it worked extremely well. I also adjusted the time delay for refocusing and set it to "long". I had very few out-of-focus shots, and virtually no back-focused shots. This is absolutely great in comparison to when I started off shooting basketball at Comcast Center. I used to constantly get focus on the crowd and not the players, and that pretty much never happens any more. It occurs from time to time, but it's pretty rare.

The shoot went pretty well, and the two teams provided a lot of great chances for photos. One player in particular scored 47 points, a WNBA league record. Fortunately for me she kept driving right in front of me and I took quite a few photos of her.

I noticed that several of the other photographers under the basket were shooting using 18-55mm lenses. That's what I've been thinking I should shoot with during these games. Use a 70-200mm for the long shots at the far end of the court and a 18-55 for shots under my basket.

But I also noticed that the AP photographers on the far end of the court were using 70-200mm lenses when the ball was under their basket. This surprised me because they own 18-55mm lenses. It looked like they were using 300mm lenses for the far end of the court and 70-200mm lenses for under the basket. The next time I'm at a game I'm going to try to talk to another photographer and ask them what they use for under-the-basket shots.

I also recognized the female photographer from the Dance Team auditions the previous night. And I recognized a photographer from the AP. I think his name is Nick. He was at the Nationals game on Sunday. I suppose it's something of a small world for sports photography in the DC area.

There's a Mystics game this coming weekend, and maybe if I'm lucky I'll have my 400mm lens by then. There are also a bunch of Baysox and Nationals games the following week. I'm sure that I'll have my lens by then and hopefully I'll get some good chances to try it out.

Al's on vacation, and I like it when Al's on vacation.

When Al's on vacation he can't cover his events, so that gives me an opportunity to remove my lens cap and take a few shots. This afternoon I attended the Mystics vs Comets game at Verizon Center and had a great time. This past weekend Al covered the WNBA game (his article is here) and the Verizon Center was "sold out" for that event. I was looking forward to this afternoon's game because I was hoping there would still be some WNBA fans in town who would decide to come out to today's game.

The game was an unusual one, as it took place in the middle of the day during the week. The media relations staff explained to me that it was because of summer camps. There were certainly a ton of campers in attendance tonight - practically the entire stadium was filled with young children from various parts of the Washington DC Metropolitan region.

My plan was to arrive at the stadium 30 minutes before tipoff, but I actually end up walking out of the metro about 50 minutes before tipoff. I thought I was going to have to find time to kill, but in retrospect that was a good amount of time for Verizon Center. It takes awhile to walk from the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro exit to the Press Entrance (it's literally on the opposite side of the building from the metro entrance). Once you get to the Press Entrance they check your bags and verify you're supposed to be there.

After winding down a long corridor and getting to the media room you're offered a meal (on the house). Today's serving was a breakfast dish provided by Clyde's: eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes. It wasn't too bad...

But between walking around the building, getting in through security, and sitting down to have a bite to eat it can actually take quite a bit of time. In the future I'm going to shoot to arrive 45 minutes before a game begins so that I have sufficient time (rather than 30 minutes). I also noticed that the wireless network worked differently this time. Last time it was a WAP that didn't broadcast it's SSID (you had to key in the SSID by hand as well as the WEP passphrase). This time it was a wide open WAP that brought you to a webpage where you keyed in a username and password. Today's setup was much better than last time - those cloaked WAPs are so cheesy. And who's going to steal the signal? I couldn't even get a cell phone signal from the media room for crying out loud...

I headed out to the court and said hello to a few people I recognized from the last game. One guy had an almost identical setup as me: D200 with the MB-D200 battery pack, 70-200/f2.8 VR lens, and an 18-55/2.8 DX lens. I don't have the 18-55/2.8 yet, but I plan on getting one at some point in the future.

I decided to break away from the rest of the photographers and instead shoot from the opposite end of the court. All of the photographers were positioned under the basket that the home team defended during the 1st half. I'm not sure if it's because they wanted to have dibs on their spots for the 2nd half action, or if they chose that end because they could cover coaches and players reactions during the game. Either way, it was completely filled under that basket so I headed down the court to a wide open spot.

I sat out around the 3point line next to an AP photographer who was shooting with a 300/2.8 and a 70-200/2.8 lens. With 70mm being my closest range, and with the 1.5x crop factor on my DX sensor, I really struggle being under the basket. Even out at 3 point range I'm really in too close for a lot of the under the basket shots. I do manage to get a lot of good baseline drives tho.

I read last night about exposure compensation (EV) and I have to say that I still don't understand this beast yet. Seems like it's just an auto-darken or auto-lighten that is applied when you shoot a photo. The D200 manual recommended positive EV when the subjects are darker than the background, and negative EV when the subjects are lighter than the background.

Most of the basketball players on the Mystics are African American, and thus they tend to be "darker" than the background. I decided to apply a +0.3 EV correction thinking I would see their faces a little better. I took a few test shots at 1/400second, 1250ISO, f2.8, and +0.3EV and they looked pretty good. I decided to stick with it during the entire game, and I had pretty good results. My shots are definitely brighter than the last Mystics game I covered, and I didn't have to touch 1600 ISO.

My only complaint about the +0.3EV is that it really made for some bright jerseys. The Mystics wear a white uniform at home, and it's really bright in some of my shots. I guess it's a difficult call - you increase the EV correction to get brighter faces, but that washes out the jerseys.

I've heard a bunch of people talk about noise reduction filters that they apply during post-processing. I really need to look into that and see how well they work (or don't work). If I can shoot at ISO1600 and then reduce the noise through software that might turn out better than shooting at ISO1250 and using a +0.3EV correction.

I kept using the group-weighted autofocus system on the D200 and it worked really well. I noticed that the other D200 shooter was using group-weighted autofocus system, so that's positive reinforcement that I'm on the right track. I'm still getting a lot of soft photos, but in this case I don't think there's much I can do due to the lighting situation. Outdoors I can reduce my f-stop to a higher value and that might improve my sharpness. But in low light I think I'm pretty much stuck with f2.8 for exposure purposes. Not sure how that helps me or hurts me in the long run.

On the other hand, it could be the case that I'm just looking at my pictures under too large of a microscope. Any picture, when zoomed in by 800%, looks like crap (either blurry or over/under saturated). I noticed that my pictures aren't too bad when I look at them on my blog or on DC Sports Box, even tho I think they look like crap when I view them at full resolution on my laptop. It would really help if I could follow someone like Al around during his post processing to see what kind of sharpness his shots have. Then I can determine if this is something I can improve or if this is a limitation of my equipment. I suspect it's something I can improve, but it would be good to have confirmation.

Lastly, I would like to point you over to my new website, BlunckSports. It isn't a whole lot to look at right now, but I'm planning on putting more content up there as I increase my skills. I'll continue posting my story to this blog about what techniques I'm learning, but I plan to be working on BlunckSports, as well as the DC Sports Box in the future. Please give both sites a look and an RSS subscription.

This afternoon was my first professional shoot, and it was a lot of fun!

I spent last week in NC working on some customer projects, and as a result I've been out of town and haven't been shooting in over a week. My last event was a soccer game from a week ago. I had scrubbed my shooting plans for the weekend in anticipation of not returning to Maryland until late Sunday night.

However, when Al emailed on Thursday and asked if I would be willing to cover the Mystics game on Sunday I decided to come home early. I was very excited to shoot in Verizon Center because I had never covered a professional game before, and I was interested in experiencing the lighting situation.

Al put in the request for me late on Friday for a credential, so he couldn't guarantee that my name would be on the official list. However, the DC Sports Box has a season long credential with Al's name on it. As a result, he didn't anticipate a problem. He sent me an email with pretty detailed instructions on where to go, what entrance to use, and then where to go afterwards. They were good, but things still managed to fall apart.

One thing about being a sports shooter that I didn't anticipate was how important it would become to be comfortable saying the phrase: "Can you help me find the Media Entrance?" I was also unprepared for how comfortable you have to be walking up to complete strangers and asking for directions to locations or where certain facilities are located. It also pays to do you homework and use Google Maps as much as possible.

When I covered the Capitals Uniform Unveiling I was told "Just get off at the Ballston metro stop" and go from there. I didn't really think twice about it, and I was pretty accustomed to the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro where the Verizon Center is literally just outside the stop. When I walked out of the Ballston Metro I expected the same but things were quite quite difference!

Fortunately there were a lot of people walking to the event wearing Caps jerseys so I could just follow them. But even after following them to the venue I still had a very difficult time locating the media entrance. I think I asked 4 different people for help before I finally found the correct place.

This afternoon was very similar. I walked around the Verizon Center to what I believed was the M Street Entrance and then someone redirected me around the building (next to a construction yard). I found the Press Entrance and went inside and had to ask the guy where the media room was located. Then I walked down the hall and it wasn't where the guy had said it would be so I had to ask another guy. Once I arrived the guard gave me a little ticket (which I had no idea what it was used for), so I took it and went inside. I saw some people with food, so I asked them how they where they got it. They pointed to the serving table and said I used the ticket to get free food.

The point of all of this is to just document how many people you have to talk to when you're getting started. This was all new to me, and fortunately I'm not afraid to walk up to strangers and ask for help. But if you're shy, introverted, and uncomfortable asking people for help you should probably either get over those personality challenges or find another hobby or occupation. If you can't even get to the event how can you be successful?

After getting all settled in (and asking another photographer what the SSID was for the wireless network), I walked out to the arena floor to take a few test shots. I wanted to try my 50/1.8 lens to see how much light it let in. The 1.8 vs the 2.8 really makes a big difference. When I purchase my 50AF I'm definitely going to step up to f1.4 in order to get a lot of light.

It will be interesting to see how the wider aperture and shallower DOF effects my ability to shoot a good shot. Overall tho I think I'll have better shots because I'll be able to reduce the ISO down to a lower level (maybe 600 if I'm lucky?) and still properly expose the image. As it stands now when I'm on f2.8/1/500th I have to juice the ISO up to 1000, 1250, or 1600. And that makes noise. I envy the shooters with the flash remotes so much... But that's so far out of what I can achieve that it's not even worth feeling bad about...

I noticed that a lot of the shooters were using 18-55/f2.8 DX lenses on one body and then 70-200/2.8 or 300/2.8 on another body. I'm interested in how the 300mm lens looks at the far end of the court, but I'm really really happy at 200mm from a distance. I almost feel like 300mm would be too much for a basketball court. If Al and I cover an event together I'm going to ask him to bring his 300 - I'd love to take a gander through the lens to see how large the players are in the frame.

I shot the entire game with the 70-200/2.8 because I just can't keep up with the players in my MF 50/1.8 lens. I really wanted that extra f-stop but the manual focus was just too much for me. I couldn't keep people in focus and it just didn't work well at all. As a result I went back to the 70-200 for the game and I felt way too close for the shots under the basket.

I noticed another photographer using an 85/1.4 lens, and that caught my eye. I thought it was a strange lens selection because 70mm is too much for action on the near side of the court, and 70 is too little for action on the far side of the court. I asked him how it was working for him and he said it was good. I wish I knew where his photos were published so that I could take a look for myself.

I played around with my focus settings a lot this evening. When I used spot focus or even CW I took a lot of OOF shots. I switched the focus system to 11 points and put it on the aggregate function (the top one on the back of the D200) and a lot of my focus problems went away. I had a few OOF shots, but for the most part this setting worked very well. I also used Continuous autofocus and the AF system was on FPS mode. I'm not sure what the difference is between FPS and Focus+FPS mode... That'll be a Google search later on I suppose...

I noticed that my position on the baseline made a huge difference in my shots. During the first half I was positioned very close to the line that the players have to set up on during a free throw. I was very close to being under the basket, and this made it VERY difficult for me on a 70mm lens. If I was on a 18-55 it would've been great. In the second half I sat outside near the 3 point line and it was remarkably better. At 70mm I could still get a good amount of the player's body when they were under the basket. When I was down low I was just too close.

It was good being back on the basketball court again. Maryland Women's Basketball is where this whole sports shooting adventure started for me, with the help of my high school friend Reza. When I received a D40 in early December 2006 as a gift I asked Reza for help in getting me into a few games so that I could learn more about exposure settings, autofocus, and how to use a DSLR. That sparked my interest in sports shooting and has resulted in me shooting dozens of softball, baseball, football, basketball, lacrosse, and soccer games over the past 6 months. Despite all of the venues, all of the teams, all of the lighting conditions, and the varying levels of play of the teams there's a special place for women's basketball, and being on the floor of the Verizon Center brought that back to me. Can't wait til the fall!