The Nikon D90 and Nikon 70-300 VR Take On Indoor Basketball Game!

shutter priority - exposure 1/250 - F4.8 - 250mm - ISO 3200
 

How good would the Nikon D90 with the Nikon 70-300 f/4.5-5.6GED IF AF-S VR lens perform indoors with no flash and fast moving action? You be the judge.

I recently had chance to shoot a relatives collage basketball game at Maples Pavilion. He plays for Utah and was going to be my main subject obviously. Wishing I had the perfect indoor 2.8 telephoto zoom lens and knowing that wasn't going to happen I turned to my trusty Nikon 70-300vr lens.

At first I started in aperture mode and wide opened with my ISO set to 800. This setting was definitely not going to work very well after experiencing a few shots that were blurry and plain bad. I then said "what the heck lets go to shutter mode and bump the auto ISO up to a very rarely used 3200". I instantly started getting better shots and the 70-300vr was tracking good in continuous focus mode and getting pretty sharp shots. But you know how looking at the little LCD screen of your shoots could look nothing like that when you download them to your big computer and see your shots on your monitor. I was worried that the noise from such a high ISO would rear its ugly head once I got home and downloaded the photos. I was very surprised. I probably ended up taking over a hundred RAW shoots and Id say 75% came out good. The D90 handled the high ISO just as claimed. The 70-300vr performed very well for such tough shooting conditions and being a lens most can still afford. Now I'm not saying these shots were totally noise free at full size but they were deffenitly workable in my editor to end up pretty good shots.

Here are Some Shots with Settings.


shutter priority - exposure 1/250 - F4.5 - 90mm - ISO 3200

shutter priority - exposure 1/250 - F5.0 - 180mm - ISO 3200

shutter priority - exposure 1/200 - F5.6 - 240mm - ISO 2800

shutter priority - exposure 1/320 - F4.8 - 155mm - ISO 2800

shutter priority - exposure 1/250 - F5.6 - 260mm - ISO 3200