Heritage vs. Kelso, Women’s Basketball / DA* 16-50/2.8 First Time Out

1/15/10 – Rebecca Getsfrid – Commercial Sports Photographer in Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon

My DA(STAR) 16-50/2.8 arrived in the mail today… err… that is to say it arrived yesterday… with no autofocus. A quick call to Amazon and I got another DA(STAR) 16-50/2.8 in the mail actually today, and it worked. With new lens safely in hand, I decided to go do some more half court shooting.

My original intent was to hit up the Evergreen vs. Skyview game at Evergreen, but the school’s website said something about the game being moved without saying where. So I went to Heritage’s 2 Stops Darker gym and made do. 2 stops darker meant a minimum of ISO 4500, which meant noise, and even then it was forcing me to compromise shutter speed, setting it at a relatively slow 1/250th.

The lens performed great when it comes to visual quality. The SDM Autofocus mechanism seems no faster than the screw drive, which is a disappointment. It is absolutely silent, but for my shooting, I think that’s kind of a negative. I like the DZHHH sound of the screw drive, and knowing that when the sound is done, my shot’s in focus. Knowing that when the sound starts, the lens is doing it’s thing. With a .95x viewfinder, it’s just not always easy to tell whether the lens is actually focusing or not. I’d take silent and faster any day, but just silent is meh to me. Then again, at least the autofocus works. The only other issue is it has some issues with purple fringing which are noticeable at about 50% and larger, but it’s not so bad that it makes the lens bad. The color rendition is fantastic, the contrast is gorgeous (though better at not ISO 4500) and the sharpness is incredible (again though, not so much at ISO 4500 after a bit of NR).

The first three quarters of the game, I did my standard thing. Find a spot on the sidelines, and shoot the action from there.

Even with the noise, the images this lens produces are absolutely beautiful. I’ve got a commercial shoot tomorrow, and I can’t wait to see the results at iso 100 with some wonderful flash lighting.

In the last quarter, ready to say I was never going to shoot at Heritage again, I decided to risk getting yelled at and sat down against the wall, right under one of the baskets. I didn’t get yelled out, though I did barely dodge a basketball at one point. I pulled the lens back to 16mm, prefocused halfway down the key (confident that at 16mm everything remotely near the key would be in focus, even at f/2.8), went to live view for safety, and spammed the shutter button anytime anything was happening near by.

I really like the anticipatory movements of all the girls in this one:

And this one’s my shot of the night: