indoor basketball

hello, as a newbie K10D'er I am having dificulties in shooting sharp pictures of indoor basketball whereby , of course, lighting there is mostly poor; I use my DA* 16-50 or 50-135 f2.8 zoom lenses;

experiencing with settings results in :
1600ASA, multi segment metering, Tv mode, WB artif. light or flash; autofocus set on lens, image stabil. on body;

results without flash : 1/60 over 1/125, f 2.8
with flash : 1/180 with some varying f;
nearly all pictures are unsharp;

I tested also focussing on a static portrait with some background; this results in a sharper image when I use manual focus;

can anyone comment on what I am doing wrong ?
many thanks & KR

Welcome to the forum, this makes me your first reply then.

Sounds like you have the basics already covered. I cover a lot of sports events some indoors and basketball is one of the faster moving ones, as you say normally in poor lighting conditions (unless of course TV cameras are present).

The only real help I can offer is faster lenses, usually in the form of prime lenses, pre focus where action is about to be, i.e. at the hoops, free shots zones etc.

Also practice, practice, practice at lots of events, don't be put off be a few blurry ones. The proportion of those goes down over time, don't tell everyone, but I still get a few. These are my more artistic shots, when asked.

If it were easy everyone would do it and I'd be out of a job.

It is possible that your camera is back/front focussing with these lense, my K10D did and I was able to adjust it to compensate. Do a forum search for Back Focus and you should get some ideas on how to test this, you will need a focus chart and use auto focus at f2.8.

Are you using AF-C? It is possible to take the picture before the camera has locked on, though can also cause the image to be out of focus.

Thanks for replying to this;
autofocus was indeed set to AF.C as I thought easier to follow the action. Looking at the pictures, top sides are sharper than middle sections, so I suppose camera could work as to backfocussing ?

Next weekend, I'll set up my camera on 45° stand for doing a focus test on a chart.
I'll keep you posted.
Many thanks

Here are results on my tests :

K10D camera on tripod, ISO100, Av mode, WB flash, AF.S, shake reduction off, used lens DA* 16/50mm set on 50mm/f2.8 with AF on,
lighting halogen 200W, fill-in camera flash and FG540 wireless,
applied self-timer on camera (12s),
toke some 10 shots starting from rendering image unsharp by out-focussing left & right;

autofucus gives clear picture on the 14mm front lines of page;
vertical line : centered fine line on viewer for shooting; also here unsharp center; side is sharper to the front;

I suspect this is a front-focus problem; if so how can I adjust this ?

many thanks for replying