Photography advice for shooting a high school basketball game?

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steven

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I'm a yearbook student assigned to cover a girls varsity basketball spread and am having extreme difficulty shooting with the lighting conditions provided and rapid movement. The camera I have available to use is a Canon Rebel XTi with an EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. Using the "full auto" mode is completely useless because of the orange tint from the tungsten lighting, and switching to the "flash off" mode slows the shutter speed--extremely unhelpful when the subjects are in constant motion.

Which manual mode (aperture priority, shutter speed priority, or full manual) would be most recommended for this predicament? Also, what would be the optimal shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and other components for shooting such an event?

Additionally, if there are any recommendations for fairly inexpensive lenses that would work well, please specify as I can put in a purchase request for one next year.
 
you want a high shutter speed 1/500th, AND a HIGH ISO, like 800

Then you want to anticipate the action...like WHERE will a good action shot take place...OH, at the NET???

Ok. So set up your shot at the net..focus on the area, take a few test shots and then when those look OK, you wait for the right moment. Don't try to follow the action with your camera. Anticipate the action.

you can also test different white balance modes when you are doing your test shots to see which one works best.

You will probably NOT be using a flash for what I am suggesting.

By default..since you are picking a fast shutter speed, the
aperture will be a low number...eg shooting wide open.
You will find that you will likely NOT be able to take the shot indoors at 1/500th using an ISO 100 for example...therefore you will have to RAISE the ISO to compensate (due to the low light indoors High shutter speeds and high ISOs are needed to capture fast action in low light) . Its a bit tricky to understand but you should get and AHA moment when you are doing your test shots...like AHA, now I see what he means. My explanation is similar to a few others, but I am starting from a high shutter speed starting point rather than a few others who are saying the same thing from a large aperture starting point.
 
i am a yearbook teacher and have the same camera that you have. set the white balance to flourescent. this will take care of the orange tint. set the iso to 1600. the pictures will be a little grainy but with the kit lens you have on there this is the best solution. set the mode dial to manual. set the aperture to 3.5 (wide open) and then adjust the shutter speed until you get a proper light meter reading. keep in mind that the aperture will get smaller (higher number) as you zoom in so you may need to adjust the shutter speed when you zoom in. with these setting you should get a shutter speed around 1/60-1/100. this is usually fast enough to freeze motion and avoid motion blur. if you're still getting motion blur set the shutter speed a little faster to around 1/125. your pictures may come out a little dark but this will be easily fixable in photoshop or other photo manipulation software.
 
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