Football tips and tricks

[nycphotography]

+ what they said.

Wide open aperture.

Whatever ISO it takes to make it work. For the night games, you are going to be printing in a year book which is moderate size and low res. A lot of the grain will go away when you downres. You can also do some b&w converts for the night games.

Don't forget to get some "B roll". What's B roll? B roll is a video production term (and I duuno the pithy term for stills) that basically means "auxilliary shots that can be cut to or spliced in to add depth to the production". for stills, it means shots of the bus. the team huddle int he locker room. the coach running drills in practice. the players soaked with sweat during practice. stuff like that.

 

[sm4him]

There is nothing that will get you kicked off of the sidelines faster than being in the way of a line judge running down the sideline following a play doing their job. The photographer is nothing to the game and should never to be noticed or in the way. That includes when the play comes out of bounds. To risk a player or players safety is inexcusable when a small buffer can go a long way to prevent something happening. The photographer should never risk themselves either.

He's shooting high school football. I've shot over 700 pro football games and have never had any issues with the officials. It's all about paying attention. Standing 10-15 feet off the sidelines limits your field of vision to straight ahead, as any other direction you will be blocked by someone up or down field, if you are only interested in shooting straight ahead then great stand behind people. Have you noticed how close the photographers are to the sidelines at pro games? There is a line that is 3 feet back from the sideline. I watch the game, I make sure there is no one standing behind me, that way if the play comes my way I can back straight up.

^ +1 to imagemaker's comment. Not that I've had the years of experience he has, but with the soccer and football games I shot last year, I only encountered a problem ONE time with being able to be right on the touchline--and that was because the opposing team's coach (we were on their field) didn't want me there. I *never* encountered a problem with being in the way of the officials because I was constantly aware of where THEY were in relation to where I was, and I was also aware of the action on the field, so I knew ahead of time if I was going to need to step back and get out of the official's way. I had three different officials apologize to ME for stepping in front of me, and I always just said, "Nope--you come first. You do whatever you need to do and I'll work around you."

I do absolutely agree about being careful that YOU are invisible. You are NOT a fan, cheering your team on--you are a photographer documenting the game. That was ESPECIALLY hard when it was my niece's games I was photographing, but you just gotta decide what you're there for.
Also, a tip I was given by one of the team's "official unofficial" photographer last year--wear clothes that will contribute to the invisibility factor. Wear black, or something else very unobtrusive. Do NOT stand on the sidelines in some bright yellow or red jersey and cause a potential distraction.

 

[Luke345678]

Thank you all for the awesome advice. I'm gonna get out there early and try out a few things. I'll let you know how things go again! Once again, thanks a lot. Advice from the pros is always much appreciated!

-Luke

 

[curtyoungblood]

If you're shooting for a high school yearbook, then the advice to focus on the action, without a regard to what team you're photographing is really bad advice. You want to get good action shots of your team, so you need to do a little planning to put yourself in position to do so. For example, if your team is on defense, you're probably going to want to be 5-15 yards behind the line of scrimmage. This gives you a solid chance of getting your players faces while they're making a play. Otherwise you'll just get the back of their heads, which is useless to you. Also, show up early and take pictures of cheerleaders, students, and other stuff like that.

 

[Robbo521]

95% of mine are in yearbook and programs.other printed and sold.they like any of the student body.

 

[Luke345678]

Thank you all for the wonderful advice. It's a lot more than I expected. It all helped a lot and I made note of any and all suggestions! Really, thank you so much. The games in a few hours so I'll tell you guys how it went if you'd like. It's nice to have some advice from the professionals!

Thanks,

-Luke

 

[cynthiaburrell]

I was going through this video and liked it would love to share with you guys.

 

[EDL]

If it helps, I've shot exactly 5 games now of high school football. If your lens only goes to f/4.5 you are going to have a very difficult time if the game is at night unless we're talking a bigger school with a nice field and lighting.

I have the 70-200mm f/2.8 and at f/2.8 after dark I typically get around 1/250 to 1/320 at best on 3200 ISO, often dropping down to 1/125 to 1/160 in some spots on the field.

The only other advice I could give since I'm not really experienced is to use larger capacity cards and shoot your butt off. You can always delete the bad or unwanted shots, but can't go back and shoot a play again. I'm averaging around 300-350 shots per game and end up with around 30-50 that I think are good shots. I also tend to shoot some candids of the sidelines and such too.

Be ready for a challenge. Following the action through the view finder ain't easy.

Just got home about 30 mins ago from a game, unfortunately it was horribly foggy, so stopped trying to shoot anything after the first quarter, just couldn't see a thing.

 

[robbins.photo]

Luke, shooting sports is just like selling real estate. It's all location, location, location. I'm assuming your going to want to take shots mostly of the home team, so your best position if you can get it is somewhere near the goal line of your home team. That way when they are playing offense they will be headed toward you, rather than away from you - and that's what you want. You want to capture their facial expressions, etc.

Now, for camera settings, it sort of depends on what type of photos your looking for - if you want a little blur to indicate action you can shoot in AV mode. Set your aperture at the widest setting it has and let your camera pick the best shutter speed. For shots at night you'll most likely have to increase the ISO - generally it's best to take some test shots and get your ISO dialed in so that your pictures are bright enough. Keep in mind that the wider your aperture, the lower your depth of field will be - meaning that whatever your focused on will be in sharp focus, but objects in the background will fade out of focus quickly. I find this is usually a good thing for most sports shots, but if you prefer to have more background detail you can always adjust your aperture up - the higher the number, the better depth of field you will have - but the higher your f stop the less light the camera has to work with, so you'll need to test and find the right balance that works for you.

If you want to stop the action completely, which is generally what I prefer, use S mode - or shutter priority. For a good clear stopped action shot generally a 1/500 shutter speed is what your after. Again unless your shooting in good lighting conditions odds are good you'll end up increasing your ISO to get usable pictures. In general for sports shots, shoot a little wider than what you want for the final image, and crop it later. You don't want to shoot too wide, if you end up having to crop too much it will affect your final image quality - but for action shots if you shoot a little wide it makes it a lot easier to follow the action. Last piece of advice I can give you, learn the game. No matter how good of a camera you have you'll need to be able to anticipate and follow the action on the field, so the more you learn about the sport your photographing the better you'll be able to anticipate the action and the better images you'll be able to capture as a result.