EOS 7D recommended settings for indoor basketball photos

[lmtripp]

I am a new photographer trying to take pictures with a Cannon EOS 7D that was given to me.  It has an 18-135mm lense.  I've been trying to take indoor basketball picutes at my sons high school but the pictures are either dark or blurry. The lowest apeture I can get the camera to is 3.5.  What would be the best settings.  

[rs-eos]

Unless you can add light to the scene, your only choice is to use higher ISO values.  For sports, unless you want to exaggerate motion, you typically need faster shutter speeds. Thus, your pretty much going to be at the limits of your camera and lens combination.

Do look into a different lens. Though to be honest, a lens with a constant f/2.8 aperture will at most let in 4 times (2 stops) the amount of light as with your kit lens when at f/5.6.  So if you are capturing images at ISO 6400 currently, you could lower to ISO 1600 with an f/2.8 lens.

One of my favorite lenses for indoor sports is the EF 135mm f/2. This would let in up to 8 times the amount of light as your kit lens. Though it is fixed at 135mm.

Another thing you can do is to look into a newer camera body. The new ones will have better ISO performance.

Finally, you could look into post processing (do capture in RAW). You can apply noise reduction. I would advocate not relying on noise reduction though. As you increase its strength, it will degrade image quality.