High School basketball tournament time with the Canon 7D Mk2

March 03, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Sorry for the long delay in posting it's been a tough month photo wise. It's been all about work and no personal work. So I thought I would write up about my experiences with the Canon 7D MK2.

I guess I was expecting to much out of the AF system on this camera. I have been using the old 7D for quite some time and was moderately happy with the AF performance. Sometimes it was unbelievable and other times it was dismal. So when the new model came out I waited a bit and got a good deal on it (thanks John). I immediately did some research on how to set up the AF settings and ran across an article by Peter Read Miller a well known sports photographer. He ran through the settings he has done on his 1D X. Since the AF systems are basically identical I have set up the 7D Mk2 the same. So far the results have been mixed. I love the 10 frames a sec. as I get a lot of choices but in the end I'm not getting a good ratio of in to out frames. I still blame myself for some of the errors like not holding down the AF button hard enough or at all. I'm still getting used to it. Basketball is really difficult as it is with so many people running around in the frame it's hard for the camera to lock on. But it has missed some really easy ones like a single player driving to the basket with no one around. I have been able to get some good frames and I post them here as a combination of images from the past couple of weeks. We still have more to come this week as two of our teams have been undefeated throughout the season. I did do an experiment with my older Canon 100 f2 (I love this lens) on my 5D Mk3 and the results were much better. I used this lens back in the day with my EOS 1 system and loved it for basketball. All of these images were made at ISO 6400 or 3200 1/800s @ 2.8. After a little practice with the 70-200 L the camera and I should get along better. I have some nice images so I thought I would share some of them with you.

phone selfiesMasconomet students celebrate senior night for the girls basketball team with headshots on sticks of the senior players while they take a selfie of themselves during Masco's 62-34 win Friday night Feb. 13, over the Hamilton Wenham Generals. Canon 7D Mk2 w/Canon 70-200 2.8 L