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- carguy84, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Oof, not to be a hardware snob, but the equipment he lists goes far beyond the minimal to get the job done. A D200 in a professional setting is about the lowest I would feel comfortable with. It's a great, great, great camera when the lighting is right and there's plenty of contrast, however, with any indoor shooting, you're going to want to bring along a D2h or D2x if you can swing it. The focusing system on those is far superior and will hunt a lot less, if at all.
As for glass, if you're shooting high school sports indoors, you won't be able to get away with the 70-300 or the 17-80, way too slow. The 70-200 and the 17-55 2.8s are necessary for their wide aperature. Unless you won't be using the photos for anything bigger then a small photo in a paper or 4x6 prints. - fotoman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4That guys gear reminds me of my gear when I was shooting in HS :?
I love his "weapons". Most of the photographers who shoot for me (myself included), use multiple Canon 1D bodies, 400mm or 300mm f/2.8, 1.4x TC, 70-200mm f/2.8 and some other shorter lens.(50mm f/1.4, 24-70, 17-40, 16-35, etc) That's fairly standard setup. If shooting indoor sports, tack on 2-4 lites(Vivtar 285's, Quantum Q-Flashes, White Lightning's, etc), 2-4 pocketwizards, and the various grip to go along with that. Granted, not everyone can have this assortment of camera gear mentioned above, but I won more awards for sports photography shoot film on my Canon A-1 with low end lenses than I have with my 400mm f/2.8's or 1D's :) Just shoot at your largest aperture you can.
Yea, not much of an intro to sports photography, but for some people... You'd be better off heading down to the local library and picking up the Kodak series book on sports photography.
I would list his soccer photo as "what not to do", too loose, too distracting background (looks like it was shot at f/11 or something), and it looks like he's standing.
"Stopping down to somewhere in the f/8-11 neighborhood gives you nice sharp images with minimal sensor noise;"
--Just saw this quote. This is probably some of the worse and wrong advise I have heard/seen regarding sports. f/5.6 is a small aperture for most sports action shots. Most sports action photos are taken at f/2.8-4.0. And how the heck is stopping down going to help with sensor noise? That statement makes no sense whatsoever!
Best advise for equipment I can offer to someone interested shooting sports: knee pads. Get low and it will clean your backgrounds up tremendously. For those of you with a zoom lens as your longest focal length... tape down your zoom at the longest focal length, DONT zoom, and your photos will improve instantly. And shoot at your largest aperture, be it f/4.0, f/5.6, etc, you can still get good photos with that.
BTW, Hook 'em Horns to TheJas!! BA '95. Former TSP photographer, and photographer for UT Athletic Dept. - TheJas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Some of those are ok but they still look like they were done by an amateur. There is a serious background problem is most of them that makes them look like they are HS newspaper material. Sadly, real sports shooters rarely get on the field action with less than a 400mm lens. Often in football it's a 600 or better and those are not easy to come by. If your background isn't telling part of the story then it's just noise ruining your picture. All of these pics have that problem or the problem that there is nothing compelling about them to begin with.
- Mardala, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Ditto. 2.8 constant aperture is a minimum for low light. 1.2 you can almost shoot in the dark. 4.5 - 5.6 so at the max range of 300mm you are looking at 5.6 ... way to narrow for gymnasium lighting. You want your speed to be like 1/400 or greater to get good motion freeze. If its a really fast sport you are looking at 1/1000 to get good motion freeze and you would be pushing 1600 ISO @ 2.8 to get 1/1000. But then if its a well lit place you can get away with a slower lens, but you won't see crisp motion freezing.
I shoot in theater lighting often with a 70-200mm 2.8, the range is great for small theaters, but if they only made a 1.4 version of a zoom I would be in heaven. I can very easily get 1/200 - 1/400 range with ISO400 if there is good stage lighting. But dancers usually have plenty of moments where they are not moving around so much, unlike a lot of sports. - Alex2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3They forget to mention: Don't just focus on the ball, focus on people's faces when they are handling the ball.
- joegibes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2*contorts face into football grunt* uhhh
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2You say that 4.5-5.6 is fine, then you say to bump up the fstop. Which is it, "bro"? No one should be shooting action with a entry level lens indoors at f/8. I have never seen pros shoot sports with anything but the fastest and longest lenses. Their livelyhood is on the line. That's why they're all drooling over 10fps from the new 1D at the moment, as well. They get up close and personal with long lenses, get the crisp shot with good foreground isolation at f/2.8 and nail the timing with 10fps. And please show me how to prefocus sports shots. That's nuts.
- TheJas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Like this... http://bop.nppa.org/2007/still_photography/winners ...
Background is nice and fuzzy with the long lens so the action pops from the background and doesn't distract. Of course that one has really good action too. - Mardala, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2high ISO on cheaper digital cameras (even SLR's) is going to be nice and noisy. So I don't agree you should be cranking the ISO up to compensate for the wrong kind of lens. Its a backup when you need that extra grab of light to get the shot you want. But granted the more expensive cameras can shot at 1600 and its still nicer than a consumer dslr @ 400.
I am not sure what you mean exactly about pre-focusing since a game usually has people in many locations at once, but anyone who really wants to practice should know they need to get in early, find some ideal spot(s) and if possible take some practice shots when people are warming up (the planning stage I suppose). Also you have AF servo which is great for sports.
But as 1by ... said, you won't find sports photogs using a Rebel with a kit lens. Since you teach journalism you should know that at some point the gear versus what you have theory starts to break down. Not that you can't get good shots with entry level gear, its just not ideal. But in the end I guess its how serious you are and whether your mortgage depends on your ability to take nice photos. - Hilton, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Alex2, with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III Digital SLR [ http://news.taume.com/Technology/Gadgets/CANON-U_S ... ] with some good lens, you can make any kind of pictures you want.
Btw, Good Resource - fotoman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Back in the day... we ALL pre-focused our shots. We manual focused our lenses as well. Hell, there are some sports shooters out there that still manual focus their shots. Not all the time, but for following a play, sure. I do it, as do many others.
Also the last thing real sports photographers do is sit there and blast on the motor drive. That's not timing, that's using a shotgun and hoping you get something. The motor drive is a tool, it's not what enables you to get the photo. You're not going to get the peak moment by just blasting the motor drive, not going to happen. Heck in baseball alone, the bat can travel from the shoulder to past the ball in the time it takes to have the motor drive click off 2 frames (and this is at 8.5 fps on the 1DmkII). Timing is different than that. - changyang1230, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Sohosid, the author described the sunlight as a "great" lightsource in terms of the brightness, not in terms of diffused vs. hard lights. To judge the author as someone needing to learn about lighting from (mis)interpreting a single line is pretty judgmental.
- potterboy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2That's why I shoot film for anything more than snaps. $300 gets a Minolta X-700 and a bunch of nice lenses including a nice Vivitar Series 1. Add a Coolscan and you have a distinct and unique result.
- GodsFavorite, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2As for pre-focusing, I usually try to pre-focus in a certain area, one shot I set up for people driving down the lane, and I might miss a basket or 2 because they decided to go for 3's. The next shot I might go for a rebound shot, so I set myself up where I can get a good rebound shot and prefocus where rebounds normally happen.
As for equipment...for 4 years I used an SLR like camera (minolta dimage that I still love to this day) and got good pictures. i even got great pictures. But I put in a lot of time, I was at almost every football game, every volleyball game, and i would take non-action shots in case none of my action shots were any good. I experimented a lot.
I upgraded to a Rebel XTi but I don't make my living doing photography, and I still get great shots, and I get a lot of bad shots. The best advice I can give to a new sports photog is to try it. Then do it again. Then do it again. And never use automatic settings, the camera just isn't smart enough yet. - GodsFavorite, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Good call.
- yldave, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I recently bought a Nikon D200 and have been shooting local surfing events - it really isn't that hard to get great shots with a little practice and a rented lens - I used a rented 70-300 VR lens for this shot of Jeremy Flores at Trestles: http://www.flickr.com/photos/98375499@N00/13893531 ...
Many Flickr shots will have the settings listed so you can learn by browsing the best shots of the kind you're shooting to learn. Nikon's Vibration Reduction or Canon's equivalent give you a couple of f-stops of speed, and you can crank up the ISO to get more speed for overcast days. - GodsFavorite, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I have found that I will use flash the most during a day baseball game. There are just too many shadows otherwise.
I had a decent camera and got good shots, and I know people with amazing cameras that I drool over get terrible shots because they don't know the first thing about photograpy. - 1by4byzz9, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1well, by f-stop I meant iso :)
prefocusing sports shots is not nuts, how do you think that it was done before 1990.
and yes, top-tier photographers buy top-tier cameras, my point was that all of stuff is not REQUIRED to capture good photographs. If what you have is a 105mm f/8 indoors than that is what you shoot with. - GodsFavorite, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Background is a secondary consideration. When I'm shooting on the sidelines for a football game I don't have time to take the background into consideration. There is only 1 spot to get THE shot from, and if the background is not perfect that might be the price you pay. In artisic photography background is just as important as foreground, but in sports...
also, to get a nice fuzzy background you have to have a pretty low fstop, which, while fast, means you have a very narrow depth of field and a running back running down the sidelines toward you is going to be out of focus in 1 step. The answer? Increase fstop and ISO. A little noise is better then an out of focus picture. - 1by4byzz9, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Actually, you are being "a hardware snob", I teach visual journalism and I find that for just about all students, the 60-year old concept of prefocusing and planning will give better results for all photographers that will invest time into the technique. Furthermore, with modern high-iso noise reduction an aperture of 4.5-5.6 is fine, just bump up the f-stop, bro. ANYONE, from soccer moms to photojournalists can make just as good images, if not better, with an ole' beat up f3 then they can with a D2hxsmarkIX^23 you just have to put effort into it, and stop worrying about what modes your camera has. It is not about the camera, lens, flash, or meter; it is about the photographer.
- sohosid, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1@ Hilton. Ah. I see. You are someone who believes it's the *camera* and not the *photographer* that makes an image eh?
Wrong.
The MK III is a fine camera, which in the right hands helps a photographer to get the job done. In the hands of an idiot with no knowledge of photography however, it will yield the same percentage of crap over selects as any standard point and shoot.
The article is simplistic and offers some basic advice, but he's clearly got much to learn about lighting. To claim that the sun is a "better" light source than artificial lighting in a gym for example is simply not true. Harsh daylight can be a crap light source, whilst soft daylight balanced gym lights *can* be a great source. He should be saying that a good photographer can make the best of any lighting conditions. As has been pointed out, the old technique of prefocussing will often yield better results than relying on a modern camera to keep up with the action, as will the method of manual follow focus. - inactive, on 11/26/2007, -0/+0Cheapest and the best data recovery service in the world.
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- lazyfisherman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0You could manually pre-focus and anticipate the athletes entering a certain area of the court or field etc. It's not easy but certainly possible. Use a high FPS setting and, assuming your shutter speed is fast enough, you're bound to get something good as the subject enters and exits the focus area.
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