Freezing the motion while shooting an indoor sport like basketball requires a high shutter speed. I used to shoot at around 1/1000 sec with an 1/2.8 lens on my Canon 1D X
camera body. The indoor games are usually poorly lit, so the ISO (and the associated noise) increases significantly as the shutter speed increases (the exposure time decreases). Thankfully, the 1D X has excellent low-light performance. Besides, noise in a sport photo is more acceptable than in a landscape, for example.
Stil, there is a continuous pursuit of cleaner ad crispier images, so I have been experimenting with pushing the lower limit of the shutter speed to see when the motion blur would become unacceptable. What is acceptable is somewhat subjective, but in this case, I would like to have start images of the athletes’ faces, while allowing some motion blur in the other parts of their bodies (which actually enhances the visual impact of the photo). Also, I want to have a reasonable success rate of this kind of images. Every now and then, it is possible to capture a sharp photo even at 1/200 sec or so (I have done it by accident), but this happens purely by luck and shooting at such a low shutter speed would not be practical from a professional standpoint.
I found that with longer focal lengths (e.g. shooting with a 70 – 200 mm f/2.8 L IS), the sutter speed of 1/640 sec is a limit, while with a wider lens (e.g. a 35 mm f/1.4 L
), I could shoot as slow as 1/500 sec. The difference is due to the shallower depth of field (DOF) of the longer lens (at the same f-number). Actually, the shallow DOF is highly desirable, as it allows to visually separate the subject from the background.
My general conclusion is that it is a good idea to vary the shutter speed (in the range of 1/500 – 1/1000 sec), as well as the lenses, in the course of the game. I would start with the long lens and fast shutter speed to make sure that I capture some “keeper” images and than try other lens/settings combinations in the hope to capture some more unique shots.
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