I'm beginning to understand why sports / action photography is often mentioned as the most technically difficult form of photography. In the last few weeks I photographed two high school basketball games and a Muay Thai fight. I indeed found it challenging, and pushed the capability of my cameras, lenses and my own technical skills.
It's no secret the lighting in high school gymnasiums is marginal at best. Moreover, the fluorescent lighting makes it difficult to obtain pleasing skin tones. Poor lighting is exactly the opposite of what a photographer needs to stop the action with a fast shutter speed, forcing the use of high ISO and a larger aperture. I used shutter speeds ranging from 1/640th of a second and as fast as 1/1600th of a second. While this ensured I was able to "freeze" a fast moving player, it also forced me to use apertures in the f/2.0 to f/4.0 range, resulting in a shallow depth-of-field and making it tough to nail the focus. You can see in the image below that the shallow depth-of-field nicely blurs the background and helps isolate the subject.
Canon 5d MK II, 85mm @ f/3.2, ISO 6400 at 1/800 sec.
The longest lens I own is the Canon EF 135mm f/2.0 which actually worked quite well. I use it primarily for portraits but was pleased to see how fast it focused when shooting sports. However, 135mm was a little too long in some cases, and when the action came close, I needed a wider angle. My second camera was rigged with an EF 85mm f/1.2 lens which I resorted to when right under the basket. Unfortunately the 85mm didn't focus as quick as the 135mm and I missed a lot of shots.
Canon 5d MK II, 135mm @ f/3.2, ISO 6400 at 1/800 sec.
Shooting over 1,800 frames at one of the games meant I had a lot of out-of-focus shots, bad facial expressions, and poor compositions. To get the right shot at the right moment, my cameras were set to multi-shot mode. You may find it interesting to know that I hit my camera's buffer limit quite a few times. This is when the camera prevents taking any more photos until it can write / record the previous images to the flash card. I bumped-up against my camera's buffer a few times, but it only takes a few seconds for the memory to clear and get back to shooting.
Canon 5d MK II, 85mm @ f/2.8, ISO 6400 at 1/800 sec.
All-in-all I was happy with what I was able to capture, and the parent's of the player's even more. I never found the 5d Mk II's incompetent and am really pleased with their performance, though I've never "hammered" on my cameras as hard as I did at the games. Shooting low-light sports indoors does have me lusting for the new Canon EOS 1DX Mk II camera which can capture 14 frames per second compared to my 4 frames per second. This would be a significant upgrade to my 5d Mk II's which are now 7 years old. I also think it's time to invest in a zoom lens. (I've always shot with fixed focal length primes which has served me well.) When the action is moving fast from far court to a mere 6 feet away under the hoop, a 70mm-200mm zoom would cover it all. Until I'm able to fulfill my wish list, I'll keep shooting action with my current setup — looking to get that one "winning" shot in 1,800.