1. Although I believe I saw instructions of how to get the shutter speed to 1/750, I can no longer remember nor find the instructions. Answer? 2. Any suggestions for shooting basketball games indoors without getting considerable motion blurring? The shutter speed of 1/500 requires the lowest light sensitivity. Any thoughts or experiences?

-- Gil Miller (hgmiller@mnsinc.com), February 05, 2000

Answers

If you are taking flash pictures of basketball, should not the flash speed really determine the 'speed' of the lens... I think most light from the flash occurs in less than 1/1000 so the lens being open a little longer really makes no difference. The ambient light should have little effect on the photo. If you add another flash with an electric eye, you should be able to get super pics.

I remember getting my first strobe. It was rated at 1/10000 per sec and I took a picture of a moving fan. It stop the fan without a blur! My buddy was not impressed. He said "just turn off the fan" and take your pic... same result. I guess I should have poured water on the fan! Maybe, I'll try that sometime!

-- dave clark (daveclark@mail.com), February 16, 2000.

I just went thru that exercise with my son's basketball season. First I found that my 950 (and other digitals) have shutter lag (more below). Second, I found setting the ASA\ISO to 320 (max) works well, with some action blur, which actually looks cool (remember to pan the shot!).

My results were quite acceptable, even to the point of an 8x10! Doesn't replace my 300 mm lens and 1000ASA\ISO, but acceptable. Re the shutter lag, I just shot the pictures "early" in the action.

-- Ted Krohn (Ted.Krohn@FRA.DOT.Gov), March 01, 2000.