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Shoot local sports
Techniques
24 October 2007 09:24
Every weekend across the country there are sporting events that offer huge picture potential. Local sports, such as football and rugby, are far more accessible than the major stadium events, and they’re a great opportunity to master key action techniques and improve your composition.
Getting close to the action is one thing, but it still takes a little practise to get the best shots – especially when using a budget telephoto.
At small, non-professional venues you can shoot from the touchline and get close enough to the action using little more than a 70-300mm telephoto zoom. For all of the shots here we used a Nikon 70-300mm f/4-f/5.6 – a budget lens costing around £150. This proves you don’t need long, fast and expensive lenses to take action pictures – though of course, using Nikon’s £3000 vibration reduction (VR) 300mm f/2.8 pro lens might have improved the results a tad.
The weak sunlight in Britain can make it impossible to shoot action successfully at low ISO settings. To gain a shutter speed fast enough to freeze pin-sharp action, you’ll often find you need to sacrifice grain and set the ISO to 400. It’s far better to freeze the action and put up with some noise or grain than have blurred photos.
To stop the action in its tracks, use a shutter speed of 1/250sec or faster. Remember, the longer the focal length you’re using, the more important it is to set a faster shutter speed to combat the risk of camera shake. For panned shots – where you want to deliberately capture the sense of movement – you can use slower shutter speeds 1/30sec and 1/125sec.
Cluttered, distracting backgrounds are one of the most common problems you’ll face when shooting local sports events. Typical problems are parked cars, buildings and fences. Walk around the pitch to find a viewpoint that allows you to take pictures with a clean background. More distant objects are less of a problem than those close to the pitch as they are easier to throw out of focus (beyond depth-of-field) using a wide aperture, such as f/4 or f/5.6.
Finding a focal point to get the viewer’s attention is often the key to a successful shot. The expression and effort that’s shown on the player’s face can make or break this type of image. The easiest way of ensuring a good focal point is to use the ball, or the player in possession of it, as your main point of interest. Try to ensure that the ball is visible in shot as it gives the photograph context; also try to get the player in possession sharp and clear for maximum impact. Precise composition is impossible, of course, but the better you know the game you’re covering, the more you’ll be able to predict what might happen and be ready to capture it.
Why not try a sequence shot while you’re at it? Try to shoot in bursts of four or five frames per second, rather than setting the camera to fire away rapidly.