Sports Photography Question

BradC · Apr 14, 2014

I've been taking pictures for awhile but recently upgraded camera's to a Canon T3i (best I could do at the moment on my budget).

I do pretty well on family and still photos but having a few issues with sports pictures. I have recently been asked to take some action shots for my local little league for their website.

Could anyone give me some suggestions to get the best possible pictures? I seem to get alot of blur and would like to for example get the kids throwing and catching the ball in motion.

Looking for the best quality possible without dropping $1000 on a F2.8 or better lens at the moment.

Derrel · Apr 14, 2014

RAISE THE ISO as high as you need to in order to get a shutter speed that will stop the motion. In daylight hours, most cameras will shoot acceptable images at ISO 1,000 to 1,600. The pics are going to be seen smallish on a web site, so do not worry about "noise", at the expense of ACTION-stopping shutter speeds!!!!

ronlane · Apr 14, 2014

BradC said:
I've been taking pictures for awhile but recently upgraded camera's to a Canon T3i (best I could do at the moment on my budget).

I do pretty well on family and still photos but having a few issues with sports pictures. I have recently been asked to take some action shots for my local little league for their website.

Could anyone give me some suggestions to get the best possible pictures? I seem to get alot of blur and would like to for example get the kids throwing and catching the ball in motion.

Looking for the best quality possible without dropping $1000 on a F2.8 or better lens at the moment.

What shutter speed are you using? For sports, I would start at 1/1000 and go from there. If it's in low light, good luck with the T3i (I have it.) Also, you can get a used 70-200mm f/4 L for about $500 or so. (Less than the 2.8 and lighter).

KmH · Apr 14, 2014

Are you shooting day or night games?

For action sports you will need to use a shutter speed of at least 1/500 and a lot of the time you will need to use 1/1000 and faster..
1/500 will work if you catch the action close to it becoming static or having little motion.

Otherwise you will need a faster shutter speed.

A further consider is the direction of the motion relative to the plane of the image sensor in the camera.
Stopping motion moving parallel to the plane of the image sensor requires a faster shutter speed than motion perpendicular to the plane of the image sensor.

Panning the camera with the action reduces the need for shutter speed.

You will also need to use continuous focus and an appropriate focus area mode while understanding that continuous focus is usually a shutter priority mode int hat the shutter will release even if focus has not been achieved.

Shooting action sports puts high demands on a photographer's knowledge, skill, and gear.

imagemaker46 · Apr 14, 2014

T3i is fine for shooting sports, good glass will make a huge difference. If you are using the kit glass, you'll need light, lots of it. I play around with a t2i, but have great glass, even with that any iso over 800 starts to look like mush, and things just don't look sharp. As has been mentioned higher shutter speed, if you have a 200mm lens or something close you can shoot through the backstop, without seeing it, if you shoot with a wide angle through the backstop, that's all you will see. Keep your f-stop around 5.6-6.3 somewhere in that range to isolate the player and get some back ground separation. Try and think ahead of the player and where the ball may be going, player on first, no one out, play is to second, be ready for the throw to second, little things that make all the difference between players just standing around, which isn't a bad thing, but you want action and in baseball, it doesn't happen a lot.

BradC · Apr 15, 2014

I'm currently using a 70-300mm to shoot with

imagemaker46 · Apr 15, 2014

You shouldn't have any trouble covering the whole infield with that lens.

robbins.photo · Apr 15, 2014

A lot of folks have varying methods for this, for me I like using Shutter Priority (Tv) mode for action shots. It allows you to pick a specific shutter speed and will adjust the lens aperture as needed for proper exposure. I'd start with a shutter speed of either 1/800 or 1/1000, as Derrel mentioned if you need to bump up the ISO to get a proper exposure then don't be afriad to raise the ISO, on a good sunny day you should be able to keep it pretty reasonable and get some decent shots even with a slower aperture lens.

Take some shots of them throwing the ball around and then start adjusting your shutter speed down until you find out at what point you start getting motion blur, for little league my rough guess would be 1/500 or 1/640 but that is just a rough guess, some of those kids can really throw a ball - lol.

Once you figure out what the lowest shutter speed is that you can use effectively leave it there and your all set. I have my D5200 setup so it automatically selects the ISO for me unless I override it, I find this to be very effective in combination with Shutter Priority mode in that it lets the camera do most of the heavy lifting as far as figuring out exposure and just leaves me free to shoot and concentrate on the action. If I find the ISO is getting too high I can always select a lower ISO, but for the most part I haven't really needed to do that all too often.

A lot of guys will also recommend Av (Aperture Priority) mode for action shots, for me I've found I get better results by controlling the shutter speed myself. Good luck and be sure to post a couple of shots and let us know how it went!

vintagesnaps · Apr 15, 2014

If you're finding you've had a tendency to get blur in sports/action shots I think it would be better to get a handle on that and learn how to get consistently good photos before you start taking pictures for someone else.

I found it took practice when I started shooting sports, going early, shooting at practices, etc. to get good at it. It's a lot like Scott said about the timing and being ready for where the action will go next.

I'd usually go early especially going to a new venue and find what I think will be the best vantage points, look at the backgrounds and think about how that will look in your photos; also it takes getting good at framing shots to get a group of players all in focus and all in the frame (or not in the frame as the case may be) as much as possible.

table1349 · Apr 15, 2014

Sports Photography Tips by Jerry Lodriguss

imagemaker46 · Apr 15, 2014

If it's a nice day, I would go with 800th-1000th at 6.3, iso 320. Regardless of what the light is you will still need at least 500th to stop the action, work with the iso to get the fstop you need, and leave it there if the light isn't changing. Learning to work with all manual settings is the best way to go, it just requires some practice, trial and error.