FZ1000 Does Indoor Basketball

 

This was  a test to discover whether my new FZ1000 can  manage indoor basketball.

Result:   With some reservations, yes, it can.

I had previously  photographed  junior indoor basketball with good results using a Panasonic GH4 with Lumix 35-100mm f2.8 lens.  I find this sport very difficult to photograph due to the boys' unpredictable style of play.  

You can see this particular game is an uneven contest. The small boys in blue had been winning all their games in a lower age grade so they got bumped up to play with the older boys.  Who won as they should,  but not by an overwhelming margin.

Camera Settings:

Memory Card: Sandisk Extreme Pro, 95MB/Sec, UHS1.

Drive Mode: Burst M.  I shot in short bursts of 4-5 frames, allowing the camera time to write files to the card between bursts.

White Balance: Auto. The lights at this venue produced  a strange color which was difficult to correct in Photoshop Camera RAW.

Focus Mode: AFC

Autofocus Mode: 1 Area, with the AF box size 4-8 of 15 counting up from the smallest. For readers seeking guidance, do not use the AF Mode called Tracking.

Mode Dial: S Priority

Shutter speed: 1/320 - 1/400  Mechanical shutter. A shutter speed of 1/500 or faster would have been  desirable but I wanted to keep the ISO settings down as far as possible.

Auto ISO

Quality: On this occasion I used RAW capture.  At other times I have used JPG which allows longer bursts but gives less opportunity for post processing.

Viewing: EVF

 

Comparison with GH4/35-100mm f2.8

Benefits of GH4

It is my impression that the  GH4 kit has slightly faster AFC with the lens used.

The GH4 pictures are less grainy at high ISO settings.

Due to the above I am able to use faster shutter speeds with the GH4.

In consequence of all three factors I found the GH4 kit produced a higher percentage of sharp frames than the FZ1000.  Some frames from the FZ1000 were as sharp as anything from the GH4 but quite a few were just slightly less crisp.

With the GH4, in about 85% of frames that part of the subject under the AF box was sharp.

With the FZ1000 I put that figure at about 60%, with many frames in focus but not quite sharp due to the relatively slow shutter speeds used.

Benefits of FZ1000   The built in 16x zoom allows me to photograph action or spectators at the other end of the court then in 3 seconds be ready with the wide angle to capture basket attempts.
Note that the FZ1000 will not zoom and focus simultaneously. The technique is to alternate between zooming and focussing. 

I actually saw more photo opportunities with the FZ1000 because of the big zoom range.

Summary  If I were a professional basketball photographer I would not use the FZ1000. But for family record photos it performs very well indeed with a decent percentage of keepers.

These results add to my growing discovery that I really can photograph almost anything with the FZ1000 and come away with a good  number of printable photos.  This camera is much more capable in a wide range of challenging situations than any other  fixed zoom lens camera I have used previously.