[pbromaghin]

I was curious to see, because I like sports photos. But I wasn't holding my breath. I'm sure you'll get some great photos next time and will better label your chemicals!

HAH! It was the Ilford concentrate bottle that came home from the store. It can't get much better labeled than that. I had it in my hand at least 10 times and still never realized I was holding fixer. I even mixed it just before destroying the film.

When I shot highschool basketball, zone defense was quite evident and positions of players were more predicable than pro basketball, making focusing/following easier, whether using manual or AF. If you don't mind cropping and only have a center AF sensor or center AF sensor is working best, just use that to follow the action and crop to a pleasing composition afterwards.

I usually just manually focus on a point on the floor or on the hoop and don't bother to shoot at anything that would be out of focus.

With basketball photos on film, your great photos are only about 1/3 of what you think you had, which is still plenty. Athlete's arms get in the way or people's faces, heads pivot away from the camera quickly. You also get technically and compositionally excellent photos, but they don't tell a story or show what's going on. I used to hope for just a few photos from each 36exp roll to be able to pick from to be potentially used. I didn't want too many because it would take too long to print them all. Just a happy small quantity of good photos. I'd shoot 3 rolls per game.

In the past I have felt really feel fortunate to get 1 or 2 out of 36. A lot of my trouble has been with using the wrong film. I used to be in love with Velvia and wasted a lot of time shooting the iso 400 in this environment. I just never was good enough at getting the exposure right and was hoping that the Delta (which has really gotten under my skin lately) would help. This was my first time using B&W at a sporting event in 15 years and before that it would be 1975.