Shooting Courtside In the NBA With Layne Murdoch

Fstoppers reader Tyler Kaufman sent me this interesting video that shows a little glimpse of what it is like to shoot NBA basketball.  Professional photographer Layne Murdoch has been shooting sports for over 30 years and has created some really spectacular images as the New Orlean's Hornets main photographer.  Part of what has made his images so successful has been the use of Pocket Wizard triggers for remote camera operation.  He can actually cover both sides of the court at the same time while only being physically positioned in one spot throughout the entire game.  Professional Basketball is one of the few sports that allows studio strobe use during the games and Layne shows you a little on how having built in house lighting can freeze action for sharp motion shots.

Patrick Hall's picture

Patrick Hall is a founder of Fstoppers.com and a photographer based out of Charleston, South Carolina.

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7 Comments

Is he shooting with a 28-300?

Wow, how cool would that be - to shoot right on the court light that. I wonder how many busted lenses he's had from players landing on them? I bet those are the times when his assistant has to sacrifice his life to save the floor camera :D

100-400L i think its 3.5-5.6?

yeah. I can understand that he can use a slow lens because of his strobes, but you would think you'd want to get less DOF for the bokeh. But, his photos look good so I can't argue..

It's a 28-300 currently on a Canon 1D Mark IV and triggered with the recent addition of the Pocket Wizard Flex TT5. We shoot at ISO 250 1/400 at F/6.3

What are the problems (if any) with using strobe? Do any of the players complain when they "miss a shot" because of the light in their eyes?

Before the pocketwizard multimaxes, there were the flash wizards. Andy B. and a few other photogs around the league still use this system due to the complexity of the multimaxes.

A lot of the team photogs will use a 70-200 for near court, then have another body waiting in their lap with a 300 2.8 on it.