How can I freeze action better?

[NedM]

I went down to Santa Monica, muscle beach, and took some great action photos of the body builders.

Moreover, how can I freeze sports action better?

I know you need a fast shutter speed and having a shallow dof doesn't hurt either.

What more can I do to achieve better results?

 

[480sparky]

Post of sample of what you think doesn't cut it.

 

[NedM]

I've added a photo to demonstrate what kind of sports action photography I can do.

 

[weepete]

Freezing action is all about shutter speed mate, the faster the speed the less blur you will get. A good place to check is around the hands of the subject, chances are that if you have frozen them your speed should probably be quick enough.

The other way to do it is to use a flash, where the duration of the flash freezes the action because of the short time.

 

[vimwiz]

Shutter speed!
So use a faster shutter speed, good lighting (fast flashes too), and fast glass.

 

[EIngerson]

Yup, shutter speed.

 

[Overread]

Start at 1/500sec as the slowest shutter speed and get faster from there.

Use a wider aperture (smaller f number) and raise your ISO - don't be afraid to go as high as 800 or even 1600 on most modern DSLRs.

 

[davf]

As everybody says, fast shutter speed and optional flash if you like it.

 

[Braineack]

what shutter speed did you shoot that at? the best part of "having a shallow dof doesnt hurt either" is that it allows you to increase the shutter speed.

The image you posted looks over exposed anyways and could have benefited from a faster shutter, without even the regards to the motion.

 

[bribrius]

trial and error. i spent sometime a month ago doing this. People jumping, frozen in frame. Then someone jumping, frozen only enough but still a little blur so they still seemed to be moving. cars going by. frozen. cars going by, frozen but slow enough shutter the wheels seemed to be moving (and panning).
Really just about playing with shutter speeds until you get used to them. im still practicing.
light is a huge factor. sometimes you just cant do it you are up against the wall. iso cranked up to the edge of excessive noise, the shutter speed slowest you can go and still freeze anything, ap all the way open. and still not enough to pull off the pic because the light just isn't there. you end up kind of on a impossible task.

 

[KmH]

!/500 is about the slowest shutter speed you can use, and to use 1/500 you have to catch action at it's peak when subjects are moving relatively slow.

So as a practical matter you won;t often venture below 1/1000.

With a lens wide open to get a shallow DoF at the point of focus distance most action shooting requires + bright sunlight, to get a correct (light wise) exposure your shutter speed should be quite a bit faster than 1/1000.

None of that factors in panning. Panning reduces the need for a fast shutter speed.

Let's visit some fundamentals:
When the subject(s) is moving across the frame (parallel to the plane of the image sensor - up or down) you need a faster shutter speed than you do if the subject(s) are moving directly at (or away) from you (perpendicular to the plane of the image sensor). If the subjects are moving on a diagonal you need a shutter speed somewhere in between.

Depending on the max lens aperture and the specific lens, using a wide open aperture can cause images to be less than sharply focused even if subjects aren't moving.

If shallow DoF is a main goal use Aperture Priority, but keep an eye on the shutter speed the camera is using in the viewfinder. Shooting outside you can also set the ISO to AUTO so if the light level diminishes, like because of a passing cloud, so the camera can change the ISO instead of the shutter speed.

If DoF is not your major concern, use Shutter Priority.

 

[Gavjenks]

Well... you want EITHER fast shutter speed OR strong flash. Flash freezes motion due to the short duration of the flash, not due to your shutter speed. So usually if you are truly freezing motion with flash as your main weapon to do so, you do it by drowning out the ambient light and lighting only with flash, which usually means really powerful studio strobes + your camera's normal flash sync speed (1/200th or so) and some combination of:
* low ISOs
* not wide open apertures
* neutral density filters

1/200th might be blurry normally, but the exposure is so dark with ambient light that you simply can't see the blur from the shutter speed. All you see is the dominant flash-frozen exposure.

Unless we're talking about high speed sync flash, in which case you do actually want flash and fast shutter at the same time. This is the weaker speedlight flash's strategy for doing much the same thing as described above.

 

[Derrel]

With the lenses many people use these days, elevated ISO settings are often needed to get to the 1/1000 second to 1/2500 second levels that tend to stop motion well. KEEP IN MIND THAT even though your camera might produce noisy images at high ISO when shot in dim, sucky lighting conditions, OUTDOORS in decent light there is much,much less that is in poorly-lighted, dark, shadowy zones, which is where sensor noise typically shows up the most. (Also, natural daylight is also what we can call full-spectrum, while indoor lighting is often much narrower spectrum lighting.)

A lot of people first use their cameras at elevated ISO levels indoors in truly awful lighting conditions, and think that the poor results seen there will transfer directly to outdoor "good-light" situations, but that is not the case. So...feel free to jack that ISO up to get the shutter speed needed.

 

[vimwiz]

Unless we're talking about high speed sync flash, in which case you do actually want flash and fast shutter at the same time. This is the weaker speedlight flash's strategy for doing much the same thing as described above.

It always annoyed me how my film body can do [FONT=Arial, helvetica, verdana, geneva]1/4000 speed, but with a TTL flash[/FONT] (speedlite 300), only 1/250.
Hopefully modern flashes/bodies are much better

 

[vintagesnaps]

Proper exposure - I usually use a larger aperture if I want a close up of an individual participant; a midrange or smaller aperture if I want a number of players in the frame all in focus. Depends on the available light and what are my best options to maintain a higher shutter speed.

Framing - entire subject in the photo, eliminate distractions or cutting off objects/people at odd places, notice your background when you're finding a good vantage point.

Timing - observe the action before you start shooting and notice the sequence, at what point does someone usually flip or turn? Get set where the athlete will be, have the camera set and get framed and watch til the person moves into a position that is what you want to capture. I often get set and wait for the action to come to me (into my viewfinder).