Nill Toulme
New member
Here are some basics for shooting sports. I wrote this for soccer, but it applies more or less to any action sport:
1. Shoot tight.
2. Crop tighter.
3. Subject to occasional intentional rule-breaking exceptions, what you're shooting for is face/ball/action/contact. No particular order, and the more the better, but with very few exceptions, a shot without a face and the ball goes in the trash (assuming, of course, that the sport employs a ball). Expressions matter a lot.
CAVEAT on the ball "rule:" I've been shooting a fair amount of lacrosse lately and realized that this guideline doesn't apply to sports like LAX and American football where some players are likely to go the entire game without touching the ball — or in the case of football linesmen, for example, even getting anywhere near it. For sports and players like these, you can more or less forget the ball and just go for face/action/contact. (I'm not sure how this applies to baseball, where mostly nothing happens at all. I guess there you're just going for face.)
4. Watch your backgrounds, both while shooting and in editing. Shooting big apertures wide open will help to blow out distracting backgrounds to a pleasing blur. (And I've been known to move garbage cans — physically, not digitally — to get them out of my backgrounds. Check the shot above for a negative example.)
5. Unless you're going for the (very) occasional intentional effect, keep your horizon level. Fix it in the crop if necessary.
6. Don't be afraid to cut off body parts, but don't cut them off at the joint. I.e., don't cut off a leg at the ankle or the knee, and don't cut off an arm at the elbow or the wrist. It's something subliminal about the way the brain processes the image that makes a shot cropped that way vaguely disturbing and off-putting.
7. For the smaller players, get down low and shoot from their level. Some people use knee pads (available cheap from Home Depot) for this purpose. My knees aren't so good, so I use a wonderful little folding three-legged camp stool that swivels.
8. Pay some attention to the overall "design" of your image — the way the various visual elements interact. This isn't high art we're engaged in here, but a little art goes a long way to make a better image. (E.g., remember the "rule of thirds," and think about diagonals in your image...)
9. Shooting RAW will leave you more latitude to recover from exposure and WB excursions, and often gives you better ability to handle high contrast situations like bright overhead sun and white uniforms without blowing the highlights, or to recover from unintentional (or intentional, see settings discussion below) underexposure. (A good RAW workflow can be just as fast and efficient as jpg, but that's another topic entirely.)
10. Flash sucks (but sometimes there's no choice, like shooting American football in dark high school endzones...)
11. If you can, use a monopod.
12. Don't be afraid to trade ISO for shutter speed. A sharp noisy image is better than a clean blurry one.
13. Shoot a lot. Then shoot some more.
14. Only show the good ones.
15. What you consider a good one will change over time.
16. Shoot tight.
Camera settings (some but not all Canon-specific):
For outdoor sports I shoot in Av (Canon-speak for aperture-priority), evaluative, lens more or less wide open, i.e. typically f/2.8 outdoors and f/2 inside. I always shoot wide open, or close to it, not only for the higher shutter speeds it affords but moreso because I like an out of focus background that isolates the subject better. (But note that if you have the light, stopping down a bit can give you a little more depth of field for multiple player shots and, especially using converters or cheaper lenses, improve sharpness somewhat. And if your background is far enough away from your subject, it can still be adequately out of focus that way.)
I shoot at the lowest ISO that will give me plenty of shutter speed, and the more shutter speed the better. High shutter speed not only helps to stop action but also makes up somewhat for my sloppy camera handling skills.
In broad daylight that might translate to starting out at something like ISO 200, 1/3200 at f/2.8 or f/3.2. As the light falls I'll start easing up the ISO to keep the shutter speed at least up around 1/2500 or so until maybe I hit ISO 800. Then I'll let the shutter speed float on down till it gets to maybe 1/1000 or 1/1500 or so, then to keep it there I'll start ratcheting up the ISO again in steps till it hits 1600. Then I'll let the shutter speed continue to float down till I'm at 1/400. And *then* I'll switch to manual mode, 1/400 @ f/2.8, because I've found that for me, 1/400 is the absolute minimum to get reasonable stopped action. 1/320 or less and it really starts to fall apart.
At that point, depending on the stadium lighting I'll either stay at 1/400, f/2.8, ISO 1600 or if it's really dark (and it often is), with the 1D Mark II or Mark II N or 1DsII, I'll go all the way to ISO 3200. I wouldn't do that with the original 1D, but with the Mark II's and other later Canon bodies, ISO 3200 is really very usable, especially if you crank up the black point in the RAW conversion (and I should add that I shoot RAW exclusively and process with C1) to block up the shadows and mask the noise. And I'll underexpose and push the conversion rather than going below 1/400. Again — a sharp noisy shot is better than a blurry cleaner one.
This all probably sounds complicated but it's not. Really all you do is keep an eye on your shutter speed and crank up the ISO as necessary to keep it where you want it. In other words, exposure becomes a dynamic combination not just of shutter speed and aperture, but of those two things and ISO. This is one of the many great things about digital as opposed to shooting film. In fact, for me it's really just shutter speed and ISO, since it's so rare for me to shoot at anything other than close to max aperture.
For indoor sports go manual. In the cavelike HS gyms where I shoot, that usually means ISO 3200, 1/400 at f/2. Here again, I will underexpose rather than go below 1/400. (Of course, if you have the luxury of being able to strobe your venue, that's the best option.)
[NOTE: I really need to update this a bit for the new cameras. Shooting with the 1D Mark IV I'm going to ISO 12800 in some cases — stadiums that are so dark that in the past I would just pack up and watch the match. Moreover, Auto ISO on the new bodies really works and can simplify to a large degree the processes I've laid out above. Another thing to be aware of is that the higher MP sensors seem to be somewhat more sensitive to camera motion; 1/500 is my new minimum shutter speed, as opposed to 1/400 with the Mark II. More to come when I get the chance and inclination.]
As for focus, try center point only. I've experimented with CF17-1 and -2 focus point expansion on the 1-series Mark I and II bodies and have gone back to CF17-0 (no expansion) except for the 1DsII, for which I use CF17-2. I find auto focus point selection useful only for birds in flight. Use AI servo of course, and CF4-3 to activate AF with the * button. That takes a little getting used to, but once you do it makes it a lot easier to lead the AF before hitting the shutter, and to keep tracking the subject with AF on while hitting the shutter periodically. It also allows you to effectively use AI servo as one-shot to lock focus and recompose, just by focusing with * and then releasing it to lock focus, e.g., for reaction shots of the bench. (CF4-3 gives you a new AE reading for each frame in a burst. This is useful when you're tracking players in and out of sun and shadow. CF4-1 locks AE at the half shutter press, so every frame in a burst gets the same exposure. Some people prefer that; I don't.)
IMPORTANT: Note that on all Canon DSLR's, in AI servo the first frame in a burst is release-priority, i.e., the shutter will fire even if focus is not acquired. Subsequent frames in the burst are focus-priority. The result is you will not infrequently find that the first frame in a sequence is OOF, and subsequent frames sharp. The best cure for this is leading the AF and giving it a chance to catch up to the subject before you fire the shutter, and also always firing at least two or three frames, as you have a better chance of the later ones being in focus. [CAVEAT: The 1D Mark III has additional options in this regard. Not having a Mark III, I'm not in a position to comment on them. Note also that the CF numbers and combinations have changed in the Mark III and 40D and subsequent bodies, so you'll have to do a little translating on that with respect to some of the other advice in this post.]
Some clarification on what I mean when I say "Shoot (and crop) tight." This obviously doesn't always mean cutting off arms and legs and ears. Context can be important to tell the shot's story. What is does mean is to try to leave out everything that's not important to that story and especially to eliminate anything that distracts from it, and for gosh sake don't stop shooting just because the play gets too close to get the full bodies in the frame.
One last thought by way of encouragement — shooting sports is hard, and it stays hard. I've shot about a million frames of sports over the last few years, and I've learned some things, and I'm getting better at it, but I still have a long way to go. That's a large part of what makes it so much fun. There's always something new to learn, and you can always get better, but you can still really enjoy yourself along the way, and if you do it a lot you'll inevitably stumble onto some very satisfying results.
As far as keeper ratio is concerned, don't let it get you down, and rejoice in the fact that you're shooting digital so your marginal cost is zero. I thought I had done pretty well when I got my keeper ratio up to a fairly constant 20% or so. After a while it went down, though, to a pretty consistent 10% — mostly because I got pickier about what I consider a keeper. More recently still it's started creeping back up, because I've begun to adopt a slightly more deliberate shooting style that tends to bring me home with about half the number of frames I used to shoot at a given event — but I bet it's still not as high as 20%.
All this is just what I've learned from experience. That doesn't mean it's all right. Discussion encouraged.
Nill
~~
www.toulmephoto.com
1. Shoot tight.
2. Crop tighter.
3. Subject to occasional intentional rule-breaking exceptions, what you're shooting for is face/ball/action/contact. No particular order, and the more the better, but with very few exceptions, a shot without a face and the ball goes in the trash (assuming, of course, that the sport employs a ball). Expressions matter a lot.
Face/Ball/Action/Contact!
CAVEAT on the ball "rule:" I've been shooting a fair amount of lacrosse lately and realized that this guideline doesn't apply to sports like LAX and American football where some players are likely to go the entire game without touching the ball — or in the case of football linesmen, for example, even getting anywhere near it. For sports and players like these, you can more or less forget the ball and just go for face/action/contact. (I'm not sure how this applies to baseball, where mostly nothing happens at all. I guess there you're just going for face.)
4. Watch your backgrounds, both while shooting and in editing. Shooting big apertures wide open will help to blow out distracting backgrounds to a pleasing blur. (And I've been known to move garbage cans — physically, not digitally — to get them out of my backgrounds. Check the shot above for a negative example.)
5. Unless you're going for the (very) occasional intentional effect, keep your horizon level. Fix it in the crop if necessary.
6. Don't be afraid to cut off body parts, but don't cut them off at the joint. I.e., don't cut off a leg at the ankle or the knee, and don't cut off an arm at the elbow or the wrist. It's something subliminal about the way the brain processes the image that makes a shot cropped that way vaguely disturbing and off-putting.
7. For the smaller players, get down low and shoot from their level. Some people use knee pads (available cheap from Home Depot) for this purpose. My knees aren't so good, so I use a wonderful little folding three-legged camp stool that swivels.
8. Pay some attention to the overall "design" of your image — the way the various visual elements interact. This isn't high art we're engaged in here, but a little art goes a long way to make a better image. (E.g., remember the "rule of thirds," and think about diagonals in your image...)
9. Shooting RAW will leave you more latitude to recover from exposure and WB excursions, and often gives you better ability to handle high contrast situations like bright overhead sun and white uniforms without blowing the highlights, or to recover from unintentional (or intentional, see settings discussion below) underexposure. (A good RAW workflow can be just as fast and efficient as jpg, but that's another topic entirely.)
10. Flash sucks (but sometimes there's no choice, like shooting American football in dark high school endzones...)
11. If you can, use a monopod.
12. Don't be afraid to trade ISO for shutter speed. A sharp noisy image is better than a clean blurry one.
13. Shoot a lot. Then shoot some more.
14. Only show the good ones.
15. What you consider a good one will change over time.
16. Shoot tight.
Camera settings (some but not all Canon-specific):
For outdoor sports I shoot in Av (Canon-speak for aperture-priority), evaluative, lens more or less wide open, i.e. typically f/2.8 outdoors and f/2 inside. I always shoot wide open, or close to it, not only for the higher shutter speeds it affords but moreso because I like an out of focus background that isolates the subject better. (But note that if you have the light, stopping down a bit can give you a little more depth of field for multiple player shots and, especially using converters or cheaper lenses, improve sharpness somewhat. And if your background is far enough away from your subject, it can still be adequately out of focus that way.)
I shoot at the lowest ISO that will give me plenty of shutter speed, and the more shutter speed the better. High shutter speed not only helps to stop action but also makes up somewhat for my sloppy camera handling skills.
In broad daylight that might translate to starting out at something like ISO 200, 1/3200 at f/2.8 or f/3.2. As the light falls I'll start easing up the ISO to keep the shutter speed at least up around 1/2500 or so until maybe I hit ISO 800. Then I'll let the shutter speed float on down till it gets to maybe 1/1000 or 1/1500 or so, then to keep it there I'll start ratcheting up the ISO again in steps till it hits 1600. Then I'll let the shutter speed continue to float down till I'm at 1/400. And *then* I'll switch to manual mode, 1/400 @ f/2.8, because I've found that for me, 1/400 is the absolute minimum to get reasonable stopped action. 1/320 or less and it really starts to fall apart.
At that point, depending on the stadium lighting I'll either stay at 1/400, f/2.8, ISO 1600 or if it's really dark (and it often is), with the 1D Mark II or Mark II N or 1DsII, I'll go all the way to ISO 3200. I wouldn't do that with the original 1D, but with the Mark II's and other later Canon bodies, ISO 3200 is really very usable, especially if you crank up the black point in the RAW conversion (and I should add that I shoot RAW exclusively and process with C1) to block up the shadows and mask the noise. And I'll underexpose and push the conversion rather than going below 1/400. Again — a sharp noisy shot is better than a blurry cleaner one.
This all probably sounds complicated but it's not. Really all you do is keep an eye on your shutter speed and crank up the ISO as necessary to keep it where you want it. In other words, exposure becomes a dynamic combination not just of shutter speed and aperture, but of those two things and ISO. This is one of the many great things about digital as opposed to shooting film. In fact, for me it's really just shutter speed and ISO, since it's so rare for me to shoot at anything other than close to max aperture.
For indoor sports go manual. In the cavelike HS gyms where I shoot, that usually means ISO 3200, 1/400 at f/2. Here again, I will underexpose rather than go below 1/400. (Of course, if you have the luxury of being able to strobe your venue, that's the best option.)
[NOTE: I really need to update this a bit for the new cameras. Shooting with the 1D Mark IV I'm going to ISO 12800 in some cases — stadiums that are so dark that in the past I would just pack up and watch the match. Moreover, Auto ISO on the new bodies really works and can simplify to a large degree the processes I've laid out above. Another thing to be aware of is that the higher MP sensors seem to be somewhat more sensitive to camera motion; 1/500 is my new minimum shutter speed, as opposed to 1/400 with the Mark II. More to come when I get the chance and inclination.]
As for focus, try center point only. I've experimented with CF17-1 and -2 focus point expansion on the 1-series Mark I and II bodies and have gone back to CF17-0 (no expansion) except for the 1DsII, for which I use CF17-2. I find auto focus point selection useful only for birds in flight. Use AI servo of course, and CF4-3 to activate AF with the * button. That takes a little getting used to, but once you do it makes it a lot easier to lead the AF before hitting the shutter, and to keep tracking the subject with AF on while hitting the shutter periodically. It also allows you to effectively use AI servo as one-shot to lock focus and recompose, just by focusing with * and then releasing it to lock focus, e.g., for reaction shots of the bench. (CF4-3 gives you a new AE reading for each frame in a burst. This is useful when you're tracking players in and out of sun and shadow. CF4-1 locks AE at the half shutter press, so every frame in a burst gets the same exposure. Some people prefer that; I don't.)
IMPORTANT: Note that on all Canon DSLR's, in AI servo the first frame in a burst is release-priority, i.e., the shutter will fire even if focus is not acquired. Subsequent frames in the burst are focus-priority. The result is you will not infrequently find that the first frame in a sequence is OOF, and subsequent frames sharp. The best cure for this is leading the AF and giving it a chance to catch up to the subject before you fire the shutter, and also always firing at least two or three frames, as you have a better chance of the later ones being in focus. [CAVEAT: The 1D Mark III has additional options in this regard. Not having a Mark III, I'm not in a position to comment on them. Note also that the CF numbers and combinations have changed in the Mark III and 40D and subsequent bodies, so you'll have to do a little translating on that with respect to some of the other advice in this post.]
Some clarification on what I mean when I say "Shoot (and crop) tight." This obviously doesn't always mean cutting off arms and legs and ears. Context can be important to tell the shot's story. What is does mean is to try to leave out everything that's not important to that story and especially to eliminate anything that distracts from it, and for gosh sake don't stop shooting just because the play gets too close to get the full bodies in the frame.
Shoot Tight!
One last thought by way of encouragement — shooting sports is hard, and it stays hard. I've shot about a million frames of sports over the last few years, and I've learned some things, and I'm getting better at it, but I still have a long way to go. That's a large part of what makes it so much fun. There's always something new to learn, and you can always get better, but you can still really enjoy yourself along the way, and if you do it a lot you'll inevitably stumble onto some very satisfying results.
As far as keeper ratio is concerned, don't let it get you down, and rejoice in the fact that you're shooting digital so your marginal cost is zero. I thought I had done pretty well when I got my keeper ratio up to a fairly constant 20% or so. After a while it went down, though, to a pretty consistent 10% — mostly because I got pickier about what I consider a keeper. More recently still it's started creeping back up, because I've begun to adopt a slightly more deliberate shooting style that tends to bring me home with about half the number of frames I used to shoot at a given event — but I bet it's still not as high as 20%.
All this is just what I've learned from experience. That doesn't mean it's all right. Discussion encouraged.
Nill
~~
www.toulmephoto.com
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