Last night was my first chance to get the new Siggy out for a test drive.

Shooting in a somewhat brightly-lit gym, I expected to have to resort to ISO 1000 or so in order to keep my shutter speed up around 1/400 of a second. Boy was I wrong! Either the gym has great lighting, or I am just not used to such a fine performing lens/body combo as I had last night.

I was able to get ISO 400, f:1.4 and 1/500s exposures (set on manual) all night long. Sure there were some that were a bit dark, especially those shot under the basket or in the shadows of another player, but by and large, it was not too bad as far as exposure was concerned.

I have found that with the D300, anything over ISO 800 requires you to nail the focus & exposure, or else (lack of) sharpness and excessive noise take over when trying to fix them in Post-Processing (PP). Last night was a breeze, although the White Balance (WB) was a bit warm out of the D300, but at least it was consistemtly warm when set to auto. The D200 WB was all over the place as usual. I have yet to find a good manual setting for these particular lights...

Anyway I used the JV game that started at 6:PM to test the combo and dial in the exposure. I started at ISO 800 and f:2.8 or so but quickly realized I could cut that back quite a bit and shoot ISO 400 to preserve a lot of the detail and dynamic range. Here is a shot ISO 800, f:2.5 1/400s:



All of these shots had very minimal PP work, generally just some slight sharpening and exposure adjustment.

Here are a couple more with the same exposure settings:




See how just a slight push or block can make all the difference in the world as far as 'perceived' action is concerned? This is why I shoot at 8 Frames-Per-Second (FPS), in order to possibly capture that EXACT moment where a facial expression or body pose will make the difference between a ho-hum shot and one that belongs in Sports Illustrated.

After the Varsity game started around 8:PM or so I thought I had things pretty much dialed-in. Here is a shot at ISO 500 f:2.0 1/400s:



As you can see, generally 1/400 is fast enough to freeze most action, and it is also fast enough to allow the camera to use the max FPS rate it will allow. 1/400 is fast enough so you don't 'need' VR, unless you are hand-holding a huge lens and have Parkinson's disease.

By the 2nd quarter I had settled in on ISO 400 f:1.4 1/500s:



I don't know how thin the DOF was at this distance (use one of Pats' handy calculator links to figure it out for yourself...), the actual distance reported said 'unknown', but I would guess it was 30-40 feet. I wonder if it reports the distance with Nikon lenses?

Anyway, I think with a little more practice I will have gotten used to this beast, it balances well but is still heavy with a camera that has a grip with 8-AA batteries inside. I use the hood for the FX option, the DX hood has an additional 2-inch adapter that adds a lot of unnecessary length to the combination. I just need to shield the front of the lens from the overhead lights, but it serves very well if an errant ball comes my way.

The focus is incredibly fast and accurate, easily as fast as the 17-55/2.8 DX, which is known to be one of Nikons fastest-focusing lenses. I will be experimenting with the different focus modes later this week, after I am sure I can get the exposure dialed in properly. More about this new Siggy later!