Basketball season has started

Two weeks ago, I shot my first outdoor 3X3 game of 2018 in Amersfoort.  Last week, I shot the second in Breda. Lighting conditions for the two games couldn't have been much more different for outdoor basketball. In Amersfoort, we had brilliant sun with patchy clouds all day. In Breda, it was dark and overcast.

In Amersfoort, I had wanted to bring a ProFoto B1 flash with me, but didn't have anyone to wield it during the game, so it remained at home. The pictures would have been better with the light, but the sun was strong enough to get plenty of good shots.

In Breda, Michiel van Ommen volunteered to help out with a B1 unit. It was a good thing he did because the day was quite dark without it. To catch the fast action of basketball, I don't like to shoot at less than 1/1250 of a second, but to do that without a flash would have required a high ISO of between 1600-3200. Decent shots can be made with high ISO, but I don't like to shoot at over 800.

Speaking of ISO, I decided to shoot both games at between ISO 200 and 400, with most of the shots at 400. This was to make fast shooting as easy as possible. I also switched to Tv mode, where the camera calculates the right aperture based on the desired shutter speed. It worked out relatively well, though in Amersfoort the camera had a tendency to favor the sky, which made some shots too dark to be usable. I may go back to manual for the Amsterdam games this coming weekend to expose for the players.

I shot all of the games with a Phase One XF camera and an IQ3-100 digital back. I used the Schneider-Kreuznach 55 mm LS lens for everything. The lens choice was a tricky one, because I've had very good shots come out of the 28 mm and 80 mm also. Normally, I take one of those or both. This time, the 55 was a compromise to get through the day without changing lenses. It prevented the uber-dramatic compositions of the 28 mm, or the reach of the 80 mm, but was somewhere in-between. On the plus side, I wouldn't have to tightly crop shots from the 28 mm, which has a tendency to squash everything I want into one quarter of the image or less. The 80 mm doesn't have that problem, but it flattens out the space, which isn't always the most desirable effect when shooting in a tight space, like the small courts at the 3x3 games.

The Schneider-Kreuznach 55 mm LS blue ring lens. This is my go-to lens for almost everything these days.

AMERSFOORT

This was my first trip to Amersfoort. It took three trains, a bike ride, and a walk on the other end to get there, a little over two hours after leaving home in the morning. The city of Amersfoort is the birthplace of famed modern artist Piet Mondrian. There are numerous references to Mondrian's work scattered all over the neighborhood around the train station, and some of the architecture appears to be influenced by Mondrian. The city itself is quite beautiful. On first walking out of the station, I harbored a strong desire to move there immediately, though the commute to work would have been a nightmare.

As usual, I got to the game about an hour after it started. I don't always do this on purpose, but often do, because the first games tend to be less interesting visually than the later ones. This is because the games are arranged like a pyramid, where the base is made up of the largest number of players, who eliminate half of the teams after every game, each of which takes about a half hour. If I start after an hour, I've skipped the first two elimination rounds, meaning the quality of play is usually much higher. Toward the end of the day they get much more exciting. Even strong teams will sometimes take it easy in the early games, to avoid tiring themselves out or because it isn't necessary. I've seen teams that are full of highly energetic players win early games against weaker opponents by hanging around the corners of the court and shooting two point baskets one after the other. That is impossible against an aggressive opponent.

The games were played an Eemplein, a plaza surrounded by shops on the banks of the river Eem. One of these shops was an Ekoplaza, the local health food chain, so I was covered for food for the day. One of the buildings, the Eemhuis, is an iconic contemporary structure designed by Michiel Riedijk. If I was an architect, I would have come to the city just to admire that building.

The Eemhuis behind players in Amersfoort.

As soon as I arrived, I pulled the camera out of my bag and attached a Lee circular polarizer filter to the lens. This is not like a small filter for a 35 mm DSLR. For those, "circular" literally means "circular shape." The Lee polarizer is a 150 x 150 mm sheet of glass that is square, but reduces glare via circular rather than linear polarization. I'm not sure what that means except that circular is better at reducing glare and intensifying the color of the sky. To attach the filter, a mounting bracket and filter holder have to be mounted on the lens. Then, the filter itself is slid into the mounting frame. It was good to have the filter because the day promised to have a beautiful sky.

This is what the camera looks like with the attached filter

Below are my favorite shots from the game:

Remco Frankin of Open Run with the ball.

Dyon Doekhi races past an Open Run player

Taking a break while the referees settle a dispute

Kenyoue Ondaan of Open Run has the ball, and Dyon Doekhi of the Concrete Lions in an attempt to steal.

Referee David Bothe observes as Open Run chases a loose ball.

Open Run and Scania players fly across the court

Remco Frankin at the dunk contest. Although I liked this shot, the contest started earlier than I expected, so I missed what was probably the best dunk.

Christian QJ Gabriel faces off against Kenyoue Ondaan, With Ingo Rutting in the background.

Christiaan Grives of the Concrete Lions with the ball

Aleks Samedo and Dyon Doekhi of the Concrete Lions converge on a player from both sides.

Aleks Samedi goes for the basket

Christiaan Grives of the Concrete Lions flies across the court

Dyon Doekhi takes one of many flying leaps to the basket

Christiaan "Batman" Grives of the Concrete Lions chases the ball after it bounces out of the net in a game against Open Run. Dyon Doekhi of the Concrete Lions looks on in the background.

I don't use zoom lenses for these games, so I cannot simply turn the lens to get closer to the players. Instead, I have to be in the right place to get the shot. Also, I am not shooting with a fast "action" camera like a Nikon D850 or Sony A9. Instead of getting between 11 or 20 frames a second, a get 1 frame every 1.6 seconds. This means I cannot hold down the trigger and get a dozen or more shots of the same play, making it easy to find the optimal image. For any play, I get one shot. If I miss, I have to wait for the next one. To make it more difficult, auto focus (including on my Nikon and Sony cameras) is not fast enough to ensure good focus. Because of that, with all of my cameras, I focus on a spot on the ground, then wait for the players to look like they will cross it. If I've judged their speed correctly, they will be in focus. Otherwise, an unusable blur.

For these games, I normally shoot from four positions: low angle behind the basket, high angle behind the basket, basket-side corner, and corner opposite the basket. With each of these, I try to get a long, medium, and close-up shot. The close-ups are the hardest, because judging the focus distance is more difficult and the timing is much more difficult to get right. Normally I get what I want, but miss many shots as well. In the end, I always seem to get enough decent shots to justify the method, but sometimes I get jealous of other photographers who get amazing moves at sporting events with their 500 mm lenses on a Nikon or Canon. I was just thinking of this tonight, which prompted me to look at some videos of sports shooters using Nikon and Sony high speed cameras.

To my surprise, the sports-oriented cameras seemed to miss focus more often than I did with my mostly manual technique. In one example with the Sony A9, the photographer fired off a burst of about 10 shots. Most of the shots were out of focus. He did this a few more times with different settings, but lost more than he got. For the most part, it got the focus right on the first frame, then it missed focus on all of the rest, or all but the last frame or two as the model slowed down as she ran past the camera. If I had shot the same thing with the Phase One, I would have gotten one or two shots, and one would have been in perfect focus. In another video, a pro sports photographer set aside his Canon to test the A9. He got better results than the first photographer, but missed more shots than I expected. I still feel like using a faster camera at these games sometimes, but when I do, I never like the results as much. While taking the shots, they all look perfect in live view, but at home, they look blurry compared to the Phase One.

BREDA

At Breda, I arranged to have a lighting assistant, Michiel van Ommen, to track the players with a ProFoto B1 flash unit. When I arrived at the venue, I was immediately grateful Michiel would be there because the sky was dark and overcast. The first thing I did was attach my polarizer. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known the sky would be dark all day, but the weather report showed the clouds clearing by noon, or about an hour after I arrived. I didn't want to fool with my bag after the games had started, so I attached it right away. This, it turns out, was a mistake. For the first time, despite many near misses and even a couple of solid collisions with players and basketballs, my equipment suffered its first casualty. The filter took a direct hit from a ball, badly cracking one of the corners. It isn't visible in the photos, but I probably won't be using it again because it is quite fragile now and I don't want the corner breaking off while I'm using it. That was 250 euros down the drain :(.

While shooting, I frequently took a look at the preview window on the digital back to see how the lighting looked. Some shots had strong contrast, too strong in my opinion, so I asked Michiel to change his position to soften the lighting. At home though, I liked those shots, so now I wish I hadn't worried whether it looked natural.

Here are some of my favorite images from the day:

Jeffrey Schelvis of Team Leiden and a teammate try to block a shot

Referee David Bothe observes as the ball is taken from Dton Doekhi of the Concrete Lions

Referee Guus Brings on the table as therapist Yuri Abrahams works his magic.

Referee Henning Frolich in the background as Bart van der Horst of Team Leiden prepares to jump for the net

Joey Schelvis of Team Leiden (and the Dutch national team) makes his way past an opponent

Jeffrey Schelvis (Joey's brother) of Team Leiden, just before leaping to the basket

Joey Schelvis gets his shirt pulled during the game

Refael Dalnoot of Open Run defends against Nikola Yugo of the Concrete Lions. 

One of several good shots of Manuel Tumba (with the ball) that I got during the day's games. Usually I get more good shots of his teammate, Christiaan Grives, but it worked out the other way in Breda.

Ingo Rutting of the Concrete Lions, one of the fastest players on the court, along with Dyon Doekhi and Joey Schelvis

Another shot of Dyon Doekhi leaping for the basket. For most players, this is a difficult shot to catch, but with Dyon, it seems he spends half the game in the air. One of these days I'll see if I can catch him standing still

DJ Michael Lewis. I had to try several times to get this right because the light always seemed to be in the wrong place. Finally, by having Michiel move forward a few steps at a time, then shooting, we found the right distance and angle for the shot.

Not a lot happening in this shot, but I like the simple elegance of it. Joey Schelvis with the ball.

Two of the fastest players going against each other, like the Flash vs. Superman. Who will win?

These players were having fun before a game. The 3x3 events are always full of little moments like this, where people are enjoying themselves on the sidelines or on unused courts, as here.

Jade Blagrove on the right and Chermensa van la Parra of Open Run flank an opponent

Referee Edith Oudshoorn of the Nederlandse Basketball Bond

This is one of the "high contrast" shots I mentioned earlier. Most likely, the low res screen on the digital back exaggerated the contrast, because here it looks fine to me.

This shot doesn't have many likes on Instagram yet, but it is one of my favorites of the day because of the red and green against the white sky in combination with the low angle and action.

One thing I like about shooting such high resolution images (101 MP) is they make crops like this possible, putting the viewer right into the game.

Announcer Vincent Rock, soon to be a superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (we hope).

Manuel Tumba wins the dunk contest. He is the player who did the amazing dunk I missed in Amersfoort, so I'm glad I got this. However, he did a more amazing dunk later that I also missed because I had to change batteries. That was an occasion to have a second camera around my neck!

Dyon Doekhi sitting still! I got it! What a rarity!

Possibly my favorite shot of Manuel Tumba from the day. Almost every in-focus shot of him that I got in Breda was good, making it hard to select a few for this article.

Game over, time to go home. This reminds me of advertising photos from the 1950's, which I happen to like quite a bit.

After I got home from the games, I was super sore all over. Too bad there wasn't a masseuse anywhere handy. A funny thing about these games is that I rarely take a break to eat or rest, so they can be quite exhausting, running around, crouching on my knees, carrying a large backpack full of batteries, lenses, a backup camera, and other things that might come in handy.

Next week I shoot in Amsterdam Saturday and Sunday. With luck, I'll have someone to hold the light. If not, I hope the sun is out!