picture 1

First, it is important to make sure that your colour balance (or white balance) is accurate. If not, the shots will look too yellow, or otherwise off-colour like picture 1. An aid in this is either using a grey card and setting the camera’s white balance to custom, or if your camera has it, shooting in Kelvin temp.

picture 2

After that, lighting is important. I’ve seen (and taken), many a good action shot that was spoiled by it being too dark. Like picture 2. Dark shots have much digital noise, and the lack of detail makes it impossible to call a shot a good one.

A good way to be properly lit is to use a “fast” lens. Most gyms prohibit flash use, and so having the aperture open wide (say f/3.2 or higher) is a necessity. Also in this vain is ISO. While a higher ISO causes more noise, that is far preferable to shooting at a slow speed where the action is too blurred. This picture 3: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjhfoto/3979435102/ in my opinion borderlines too slow. I’d say 1/320sec is the absolute slowest to shoot.

As for catching the right moment, and focusing, those come with practice. The action is so fast that both objectives are difficult. Both are needed though. Here is a shot perfectly timed, but poorly focused: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjhfoto/3441421536/ . Here the focus is better (somewhat), but the timing is off: www.flickr.com/photos/sjhfoto/3362899917/ (if I waited a sec, the ball would be in frame)

But once these things are mastered, your shots will fall into place! Just find the desired angle and dynamic quality that defines your style. Here are some that I find especially acceptable:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjhfoto/3914990276/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjhfoto/2943133555/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjhfoto/3294454151/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjhfoto/3930683103/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjhfoto/3308496211/

Post by: Sean Hagins

Most sports photographers use lenses around f/2.8. This will give you a lot of light, but shallow depth of field, meaning that this is great for 1 person, and give you a lot cleaner background. But for example a hockey player will give you a sharp face and a big part of the body in focus. but the stick or opponent will be out of focus, this can give a great effect and focus the attention on the one player instead of the whole scene. But the difficult thing about this is, when you have a fast moving subject our AF system just has to get in a very small bit out of focus and your short is immediately useless.

So when use apertures around f/2.8 or f/2. For 1 person, or when you want the focus only on 1 person. or of course when there is less light available. For a group shot, you need apertures around f/8 or maybe even higher to get everything in focus. Be aware that the background will also be in focus, so a good clean background is important in this situation.

Personally i shoot a lot of f/4, but love the effect of f/2.8. Knowing your camera in and out will help you to switch between apertures without watching, this give you both great photos in f/4 (which is a lot easier than f/2.8) but also makes great portraits or solo action in f/2.8.

When shooting indoor the most important part is the available light, you are almost never allowed to shoot with flash, and indoor lightning is never as good as sun or just outside light. You probably want to shoot f/2.8 here or maybe even f/2. Be aware of what you shoot, since your a limited to these apertures and cannot shoot complete groups of fast moving objects. try to focus on 1 target and work your creativity on this.

Good luck shooting!!

Shot at a f/2.8 aperture

Shot at f/4 background is not really clean

The guide we are still writing at this moment will be a great document about every aspect of sports photography. If this is a success we will publish more of these kinds of guides. We are already thinking of a complete technical guide, post-processing guide. a guide to Photographers marketing and the photographers money making manual. but first things first. Please let us know what you think about the idea to motivate us

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• Sports photography introduction
• The real basics
• Step by step guide to become a professional
• Gear basics
• Lenses overview
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• Workflow
• Other aspects of sports photography

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A blurry bit underexposed background give a good separation

Shoot in high apertures

Shooting F/2.8 or F/2 will give you excellent blurry background, this way your subject will really pop out and the distractive background will be almost invisible. The hard thing to this is that your shoot is hard to get sharp on the full body of the athlete. If you are shooting offense/defense action its hard to get 2 persons in focus. This is why this does not always work.

Choose a standpoint with a clean open background

Shooting towards clean or structured backgrounds will give you better shots. think of a open field, a part of woods, a empty or filled stadium will do as well. Be aware that a pretty high aperture is required for this to work. probably somewhere maximum to F/4. Personally i love to get a big crowd in the background. with a well exposed subject and a bit underexposed background will give you perfect separation. Getting this the other way around will give you problems.

The spectators in the back are a pretty big distraction

Choose a standpoint with lower chance of players in the background

When you are shooting from the sidelines you often get more chance on a player-less background. Players are often pretty close and wont get blurry by a high aperture, or at least not blurry enough. Shooting from different positions will give you more possibility on clean photos.

A higher perspective

Choosing a higher perspective gives you a awesome background of the field in the back. this way you often have no other players behind the player. the downside to this is that you don’t catch a idea of the field or filled stadium or anything. But this is sure the easiest way to get a clean background.

In this shot i think the distractive background is a good thing.

Blur your background in Photoshop

The other last solution is blur out the background in photoshop. the best way is to duplicate a layer. Gaussian blur the bottom layer and cut out the player. using the feather tool in photoshop will give you a nice even fade to blurry and a more natural look. Be careful do not over-do this. natural shots are important!

.

Not only a face on a action shot is important, but also think of great portraits you can make on the field or indoors. Concentration is a very cool expression to photograph but also fear or exhaustion can be great to capture.

In groups this is kinda different. for example a 1 on 1 offense / defense action. be sure you have focus on the face most important, and this is usually (but not in all cases) the player with the ball / puck.
A pretty easy and logical blog post, but sure some thing to keep in mind when shooting!

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Basketball Camera bodies.

I advice to shoot with something like a Canon 40D, Canon 50D, Nikon D300 or Nikon D700. But even better of course the Canon 1D mark II, IIn, or III. And for nikon that is the D2x or D3s. The reason i choose these camera because they are pretty good with ISO, and all have a pretty good Burst rate. (which is great for all sports). For indoor sports i focus really on the ISO performance. My personal preference goes out to my Canon 1D Mark III, a great solid body with 10fps and great ISO performance! The best is to carry 2 bodies, but also this applies to almost all sports. I would choose 1 for telephoto and the other for wide angle. This way you can just switch instantly when the action comes up close.

Basketball Camera Settings

Mode
Since you are shooting indoors with consistent lightning i would choose to shoot manual mode. If your venue does not have nice even lightning on the full court choose AV (Aperture Priority).

Shutter
Try to keep you eye on the shutter speed if your not shooting manual. you really need 1/250th and above. But to freeze real action you more need something like around 1/400th.

ISO
To reach these kind of shutter speeds you often will need ISO’s around 1250 or higher. it really depends on the venue and the lightning, for lower classes you will get cheaper venues and no TV lightning which will force you to go for ISO’s like 1600 – 3200.

Aperture
Since the light wont be great everywhere i’m afraid your fixed with 2.8. personally if you can get it take f/4. most of the times your shots are sharper, and when there is a defense action as well this will turn out sharp also.

White balance
This is one of the hardest things i think. Often you get orange kind of shots or maybe even blue. this is all thanks to your AWB (Auto white balance) which can not always get the color temperature right. The one and only way to solve this is working with a Custom White balance and a gray card. Since i’m to lazy to do this i shoot almost always AWB and in RAW mode so i can modify my White balance later in Post Production.

Auto focus
This is a bit of personal preference, i like to assign my AF-ON button for focusing, this makes it easy to track the athletes. For cameras like the 1d mark III i like to keep settings default (AF-speed concerning).

Basketball photography lenses

Telephoto
For shooting photos across the court i like to shoot with a 70-200 f/2.8 IS, lenses like a 300mm could be nice as well, but i think this is a bit to limited. the 70-200 gives your enough flexibility with the greatness of 2.8 and IS. You can get great mid-court action with this.

Close-court
My lens of choice will be something like the 50mm range (1.8, 1.4 or 1.2) this is such a bizarre sharp nice lens. i love it. or if you want more flexibility go for a 24-70 f/2.8 this will get you somewhere from mid-court to basket! even for overviews it will hold great.

Basketball photography technique

Follow the ball
The action is where the ball is. follow the ball and you will get the shots. Also referring to my other post “Analyze before you shoot” checkout what players stand out, or just look great to concentrate on those a bit.

Spectators and coaches
Sport is more then just the athletes, try to watch around and check for aggressive coaches, happy or enthusiastic spectators an great overviews. Also things like cheerleaders and such are great photo material

field location
I think my spots are pretty much the same as field hockey. next to the baskets to see action coming towards me is one of the best spots. second is the sidelines. Be creative and focus on faces. a face-less picture is almost always nothing good.

Seat location
If you are not able to get court side access, try to seat as close as possible. be aware that a 70-200 is minimum here. you really need the 200 to get the shots. but still its good possible.

Look around
Do not focus to hard on you viewfinder, also look around, keep both eyes open while shooting to be able to predict the game a little better. There is more to sports then just action with the ball.

]]> http://sports-photography-blog.com/basketball-photography-tips/feed/ 12 http://sports-photography-blog.com/pain-power-and-emotion/ http://sports-photography-blog.com/pain-power-and-emotion/#comments Sat, 10 Oct 2009 07:30:13 +0000 Kay in t Veen http://sports-photography-blog.com/?p=78 The reason i love to shoot sports is because it is unpredictable. and in every hour there are tons of great photo moments. Like this, did u ever see a duck swimming around with emotion? power? or happiness? no i don’t haha. Sports is full of amazing emotions, passion to win, tears of joy or tears of sadness when loosing or the enormous power some players give a few minutes or seconds before the game ends.

There are a lot of moments of pain in a match tackling another player, a hockey stick hitting someones face by accident or not. A aggressive fight during ice hockey, or a group of cyclers falling in the middle of a big hard corner. These can give amazing spectacular photos. only keep one thing in mind, be respectful!

But other 2 amazing parts of sports are power and happiness. the shot above this post for example, this is a great photo where the power is key! you don’t see the ball or anything, the amazing things about it is just pure power! But not only power of shooting, but also of running, checking a ice hockey player to the boardings or a sprint of big muscled athlete. Most of the times a moment of power is followed by a moment of happiness. Do not only shoot the shot in the goal but also the celebration!

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