Sports Photography Tips
An article by David Smith of Sports Photography Tips.
Capturing the thrills and spills of fast-moving action is an exciting and challenging
task. At the same time, it is also one of the trickier photographic disciplines,
simply because it demands skills that are not required for most subjects.
Sports and Action
Timing is the lynchpin in the whole mechanics of
action photography. Often you only have a split second to take a picture,
and if you hesitate the opportunity will be missed. As a result, it is essential
you are completely familiar with your equipment so you can use it instinctively.
You should be able to adjust the exposure without taking the camera from your eye
if light levels fluctuate, know which aperture and shutter speed is set and so on.
Time spent fiddling around with buttons and dials is time wasted and shots missed
for ever. At Sports Photography Tip we’ve all experienced missing ‘the perfect picture’
while changing the camera settings and not watching the action.
Lenses for action
As most sport and action take place quite a distance from the camera, telephoto
lenses are usually required to fill the frame with your subject. Professionals tend
to use a 400 mm or 500 mm telephoto as their standard, but that is mainly because
access is restricted at large venues, even if you do have a press pass. By sticking
to smaller venues, such as your local athletics track, football pitch or tennis
courts, you can usually get much closer to the action, so a 200 mm or 300 mm lens
will be long enough.
A top Sports Photography Tip - where a longer telephoto is required you can double
the focal length of your lenses with a 2X teleconverter. This is not an ideal solution,
because the loss of two stops of light restricts your use of fast shutter speeds.
Everyday action can be exploited by those of you with a limited lens system. Joggers
in the park, kids racing around on their mountain bikes, motocross riders practising
in the local quarry and city-centre cycle-racing can be photographed successfully
using everything from a 28 mm wide-angle lens to a 70—210 mm telezoom.
Leave the tripod at home - A Sports Photography Tip
When using long lenses some kind of support will also be required. A tripod is unsuitable
because it is slow to use and restricts your movements, so most photographers opt
for its one-legged cousin, the monopod, instead. The beauty of a monopod is it provides
plenty of support when used properly, but gives you the freedom to move around and
follow the flow of the action. Its is an added expense but it’s a top Sports Photography
Tip
Keeping your subject sharp
Allied to perfect timing is the need for accurate focusing skills. There is little
point in tripping the shutter at the right moment if your subject is not sharp.
Also, when you are using telephoto lenses set to wide apertures, depth of field
is very shallow, so there is little or no margin for error. Depending upon the type
of event you are photographing, two completely different focusing techniques can
be used — pre-focusing and follow- focusing.
Pre-focusing - involves focusing on a point you know your subject
will pass, such as a bend in a racetrack, a hurdle, a canoeist’s slalom gate, or
the crossbar in a high jump. All you do then is wait until your subject approaches
and trip the shutter just before it reaches the point of focus. It is important
to shoot just before your subject snaps into focus because the shutter takes a fraction
of a second to open, so if you wait you will miss the shot.
The points generally chosen for pre-focusing tend to be places where the pace of
action is slowed down, so you stand a better chance of capturing a perfect shot
and can use a slower shutter speed. Motor cyclists often travel at 150 mph on a
straight section of track, for instance, but at a corner that speed will be halved.
Capturing movement
The shutter speed you need to freeze action depends upon three important factors
— how fast your subject is moving, how far away it is from the camera, and the direction
it is travelling in relation to the camera.
If your subject is coming head-on, for example, you can freeze it with a slower
shutter speed than if it is moving across your path. Similarly, a faster shutter
speed will be required to freeze a subject that fills the frame than if it only
occupies a small part. A shutter speed of 1/1000 or 1/2000 sec is fast enough to
freeze most action subjects. Unfortunately, light levels will not always allow you
to use it, even with your lens set to its maximum aperture, so you need to be aware
of the minimum speeds required for certain subjects.
Of course, you don’t always use a fast shutter speed. In fact often doing so is
counter-productive, because by freezing all traces of movement you can easily lose
the drama and excitement of the event. A high jumper caught in mid-air over the
crossbar is obviously in motion, for example, but a racing car frozen on the track
might as well be stationary when totally frozen.
Adding some blur to your pictures
This can be avoided by intentionally introducing some blur into your pictures. If
you use a slow shutter speed anything from 1/60 to 1/2 sec — and keep the camera
still, your subject will simply blur as it passes, while the background remains
sharp. Runners at the start of a marathon or a canoeist passing through a slalom
gate are two subjects that could benefit greatly from such an approach.
A technique which works even more successfully, and can be used for just about any
action subject, is panning. Again, a slow shutter speed is used, but instead of
keeping the camera steady you track your subject with it by swinging your body,
and trip the shutter while you are moving. This produces an image where your subject
comes out relatively sharp but the background blurs. The effect can look stunning.
The amount of blur created depends upon the smoothness of the pan and the shutter
speed used. If you want your subject to be pin-sharp you need to pan evenly, so
it remains in exactly the same part of the frame throughout the exposure — this
takes practice to master. If the pan is uneven, or your subject is moving unevenly
— such as a runner with his arms and legs swinging — you cannot avoid creating blur.
But do not worry as this often leads to more powerful results, and extensive blurring
of both the subject and background can produce eye-catching impressionistic images
like the famous bullfighter pictures by Ernst Haas as shown below.
Shutter speeds
At Sports Photography Tips we recommend, as a starting point, use a shutter speed
of 1/250 or even 1/500 sec with motor racing, 1/60 or 1/125 sec with cyclists and
1/30 sec with joggers. Once you gain confidence and your panning improves you will
be able to keep your subject sharp in the frame when using shutter speeds down to
1/2 or even one second.
Here at Sports Photography Tips we hope you’ve enjoyed this article on
action photography. Why not try one of our other Photography Tips article.
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