Taking pictures of an exciting sports event, including American football, Rugby league, football, tennis and everything in between is a great feeling for those who do it. Sports Photography is recognized as one of the most lucrative branches of press photography in the world. Get more customers for the cover of your newspaper, magazine or website and improve the sales or visits of your site.
What do you mean by sports photography?
“Sports photography”, like other genres of photography, has a great variety; Sports action photography, sports fringe photography, sports feature photography, etc.
How to do sports photography?
You need a digital SLR (single reflection lens) camera or a camera that can adjust the shutter speed yourself. If you do not use these types of cameras, you no longer have a chance to take good sports photos. Here are a few important tips to do better sports photography;
- For sports photography, the lens or magnification range should be at least 200 mm.
Specifically, having a focal length of more than 200 mm is much better,
Because you can get closer to it and know that without zooming in,
You can not separate any of the items from the other parts.
Two lenses that are common for beginners are the Nikkor AF-S DX 18-300mm f / 3.5-5.6G ED VR or the Canon EF 100-300mm f / 4.5-5.6 USM.
- Do not use fully automatic mode in sports photography.
This is a mistake that is very common among beginners. They usually set their camera to fully automatic or preset “sport” or “motion” modes. While these may work well at the right time, But to go to a higher level in photography, you have to use the semi-automatic mode.
Use a high shutter speed camera.
In sports photography, you need to make sure that your camera’s shutter speed is fast enough to record the fast movements of athletes. To capture motion, you need a camera with a minimum shutter speed of 1,500th of a second. Try not to buy a camera with a shutter speed below 1.5 thousandths of a second.
In the field of sports photography, use the aperture priority mode.
A typical digital SLR camera has automatic, programmed, shutter priority, aperture and manual modes. The aperture number is the amount of aperture (f / stop) that determines the amount of light entering the camera sensor. This is shown on the Canon camera with the letter AV and on the Nikon camera with the letter A. If you do not use a digital SLR camera, you do not need to worry about aperture settings, but rather you should pay attention to the shutter speed, which we will discuss soon. When we set the aperture of the camera to the aperture priority mode, we allow the camera to adjust the shutter speed.
On a bright sunny day, this is usually the best setting. Many sports photography professionals use aperture priority mode. What we seem to be doing in this case is adjusting a very large aperture, which is a small aperture number such as f / 2.8 or f / 4.
This ensures that as much light as possible enters which causes the camera uses a high shutter speed for proper exposure. When more light enters the camera, it causes the shutter to slow down use, thus helping to record that flow.
Note the sensitivity (ISO) in sports photography.
As you know, shutter speed is very important. To determine the right exposure, we use three tools: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. When we shoot in semi-manual modes, such as aperture priority or shutter priority, we have to adjust the sensitivity according to the place, time and conditions of the event we are shooting. For example, for a football match on a bright sunny day, because there is too much light Available for camera use, a low value of 400 is suitable for sensitivity. However, if it is a cloudy day, not much light is available and we have to give this information to the camera by setting the ISO. On darker days, you should usually increase the sensitivity to close to 800 to 1200.
For sports photography, if the aperture priority mode is not available, use the shutter priority mode.
These settings are for those who do not have an SLR camera and only have a camera that can use shutter speed settings best. Since many people who read this text will not buy an SLR camera, this is important to keep in mind that you can still take great photos. Many cameras, including mirrorless cameras, will enable users to adjust the shutter speed.
Instead of giving information to the camera about how much light enters, as in priority
Aperture We did this, using the shutter priority we can directly adjust the shutter speed we need. The camera then determines how much aperture is needed.
As mentioned earlier, a shutter speed of at least 1,500th of a second is required. When you enter the camera settings manually, you should take a sample photo, otherwise, you will see that the amount is too high and does not allow enough light to enter the camera.
Use fast autofocus and continuous shooting mode for sports photography.
In order to be able to continue taking pictures with the camera, we want to adjust it so that it constantly focuses on our goal or goals, instead of being on a fixed point.
More importantly, we need to set up our camera to take multiple shots, which is usually the case turn the “frame per second” or “consecutive”. Find these two on your camera and make sure when you ask to take sports photos, they are bright.
If you have the option to set the frame rate per second, always do it set to your maximum, whether 3, 4, 5 or more shots per second. This increases our chances of capturing those critical moments.
Put yourself in the right place for sports photography and get to know your sport.
The best thing you can do is put the sun behind you. This will make sure that a lot of light shines on your target that is allowed to enter gives as much light as possible and records motion at high shutter speeds. If you know a lot about the sport you take pictures of;
This is in anticipation of where the ball or stream can get the best possible photo for you
It helps a lot. Follow the flow and movement with your camera and make sure you zoom in enough you have made the players themselves in more frames.
Take lots of photos to become a professional in sports photography.
Whether a soccer player is hitting the ball or a tennis player, once you have placed your target in the camera frame, you can focus on your target, cut the shutter button in half and then press it firmly to take a lot of pictures in one second, thanks to the continuous shooting mode we set earlier. Today and in this era, we are lucky that we can see the result of our work immediately by using digital photography. At Sports events, taking 2000 photos with a camera will not hurt you.
For sports photography, take a photo from the bottom view, such as your knees, and use a monopod.
By taking photos from the side of your knees, you are taking a more dramatic view and also giving you a clearer background instead of other athletes and grass. The bottom view gives your photo tremendous depth and is the way all professional photographers have done it.
Even if your lens and camera are not heavy, look for a monopod to use. The monopod is very useful and helps you to keep your camera steady and balanced when shooting from different angles, especially from the knees.