Holy Smokes! I finally got one!

I finally have a sharp photo of some kid dunking! woohooo!!!

Lansdowne’s Brent Arrington dunks on a Western Tech player early in the game. Lansdowne defeated guest Western Tech 54-34 Wednesday, January 13, 2010.

My D700 has been out for repairs since the start of the holiday season. — which is in the middle of high school basketball season. Because I sent it off two days before Christmas, it got processed a day or two after New Years.

Thanks to my NPS membership, I finally my loaner D700 today.

I didn’t realize how much I missed it. The D300s is a fine camera — but it’s just a frustration with high school basketball. It looks like crap at 3200 ISO and the DOF is too dense.

My perfect high school bball set up is the D700 and the 85 f/1.4. Of course, my 85mm is getting fixed, too, so for this game, I hand held a 200mm f/2 for this game. It’s a beautiful lens which yields beautiful results, BUT it’s really hard to manually focus without a monopod.  But shooting bball, on the floor with a monopod is pointless/a danger to the players should they fall into me. So, I have to rely on AF, which gives me about a 40% success rate.

And speaking of success, I’ve never actually made what I would consider a successful dunk photo, either. Mostly because they’re such rare occurrences. But, because of the D700, I’ve only recently been able to stop action in high school gyms. So, the dunks I’ve shot in the past have been riddled with motion blur and high ISO noise. And on one occasion last year, the AF on my 85 decided the audience was more important. sheesh! Anyways, I like this dunk photo. I consider it a small victory. is it a portfolio shot? …maybe if I made a “January 2010″ portfolio. It’s probably got as much going against it as it has going for it. But when all’s said and done, recognizing the little triumphs, I find, are what keep you you happy. And that’s why I’m sharing it with all of you.

As always, thanks for looking.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 9:58 pm. It is filed under Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.