Sports photography - challenging

[maderito]

I've shot film for years and digital for less than a year. Because you can learn quickly from the instant feedback of digital, I finally tried shooting sports action. It is quite a challenge. You need fast lenses, high ISO, and a good eye for action.

I started with local women's collegiate basketball. The lighting was fair. Most importantly, there were no barriers to getting down close to the action. Here is an example of selected shots from my "work in progress."


http://www.pbase.com/maderito/womans_basketball
Comments welcomed.

[abdulsharif]

off topic.....the picture of the guy playing the sax is awesome.

[ukexpat]

I've shot film for years and digital for less than a year. Because you can learn quickly from the instant feedback of digital, I finally tried shooting sports action. It is quite a challenge. You need fast lenses, high ISO, and a good eye for action.

I started with local women's collegiate basketball. The lighting was fair. Most importantly, there were no barriers to getting down close to the action. Here is an example of selected shots from my "work in progress."


http://www.pbase.com/maderito/womans_basketball
Comments welcomed.

Yup you are right. I have attempted to shoot my nephew's basketball games, using my Canon 10D, with a 100-400 IS zoom on a monopod. Even with that set up, I had to push the ISO setting to 1600 to get usable shutter speeds. In fact that zoom is too long -- even at the 100mm end (equivalent to about 160mm on the 10D), it is too "tight".

I did use the lens on my old D30 to good effect at a cricket match in Barbados a couple of years ago:



Full size at: http://www.pbase.com/image/14824716

[maderito]

I did use the lens on my old D30 to good effect at a cricket match in Barbados a couple of years ago:

Agreed. Nice shot. It reminds me that they use wickets when playing cricket - and that's about all I know of the game. Perhaps you'll post some more cricket shots in the future in your sports gallery. I'll be on the look out.

[maderito]

off topic.....the picture of the guy playing the sax is awesome.

If you heard him, you'd have the very same comment!

I've visited your gallery before. You're developing your style. Keep up the good work.

[framewerkz]

Yup, sports photography is tough. Add to this a camera-unfriendly environment (like salt water!), and a fast lens will give you all sorts of problems on a bucking boat - framing, keeping things horizontal, spray, and depth of field... at f/2.8 you have almost zero tolerance in terms of focus depth. Thank God for digital - I'd be burning film like it's going out of fashion otherwise...



(see the whole gallery at http://www.pbase.com/framewerkz/wblota)

[rphoto]

here is a couple of my daughter playing hockey




and one rollerblading

[qleap]

I've been trying some sports photography and also found it to be very challenging. Indoor scenes are difficult because of the poor lighting. Trying to anticipate action and a limited field of view are other obstacles. I found the Canon 10D "sports" mode to be inadequate because it set the ISO too slow and the f-stop too large. Now I set the speed fast, ISO fast and let the camera adjust the f-stop. Here's one that came out well:



Here my gallery of sport shots:

http://www.pbase.com/qleap/sports

[ukexpat]

Be careful how high you set the ISO setting. In sunlight you should not need to set it above 400 (at a guess). The higher you set it, the greater the potential for "noise" in the image.

[framewerkz]

Here's one from today...

http://www.pbase.com/image/26877779