Sports photography skills to capture wonderful moments

We are all fascinated by action photography, especially capturing exciting moments in sports. There are always many factors to consider if you want to take good sports photos. In this chapter, we will review the methods to achieve clear results.

1, sports knowledge

Although not necessary, if you are familiar with the specific sports to be filmed, you will have certain advantages. This helps to predict what will happen.

Location:

Knowing the shooting location is of great benefit to the success of shooting. We should not only care about the theme, but also the background. The shooting position should not allow the viewer's line of sight to shift from the shooting object to the background. Try to fill the whole screen with the subject. Most people don't have a pass and can't get a good position in the shooting, so try to get close to the subject.

Use the aperture of f/2.8 to blur the complex background in the photo and separate the object from the background.

Step 2 equip

Because most of the time is long-distance shooting, it is necessary to equip with a telephoto lens. Different motion operations require different telephoto lenses. For example, in basketball, an 85mm lens may be enough to shoot basic movements. A 400mm lens may be more suitable for football. The speed of the lens is also a key factor. The larger the aperture or the faster the lens, the faster the shutter speed can be used.

A faster shutter speed can capture motion better (see the section on capturing motion below). In addition, the larger the aperture, the easier it is for the background to lose focus. This can reduce the distraction caused by the messy background and make the subject clearly visible. Most sports photographers use rangefinders to increase the focal length of the lens. Rangers generally provide the range of 1.4x or 2.0x. If 200mm lens and 2.0x rangefinder are used, the focal length will be doubled. However, remember that you have to put up with losing two levels of aperture. Therefore, if the maximum aperture at 200mm is f/2.8, the maximum aperture is only f/5.6 after using the 2.0x rangefinder. This is OK for outdoor sports photography, but shooting indoor sports (such as gymnastics) in poor light may be a problem.

1.4x rangefinder

Camera:

The next important device is of course the camera. Most cameras have autofocus function, which is very helpful when tracking motion or moving quickly. But the autofocus machine is not perfect. Fortunately, many cameras and lenses have manual focusing options, which can be used for easily predictable sports, such as swimming. When using manual focusing, just focus in advance where the action will happen and wait. Make sure to start releasing the shutter before the action to be filmed comes. If you don't release the shutter until you see what you want to shoot, it's too late. At this time, it is very useful if the camera has the function of taking 8 shots per second, because the probability of just taking the required action is higher. If the camera is slow, you must rely more on luck and/or skill to predict the action to be shot.

If you want to take a lot of portrait photos, you can consider using a vertical handle with a shutter button (if the camera is not included) to avoid excessive arm fatigue.

3. Camera bracket

If you use a larger and heavier lens, such as 300mm f/2.8, you should consider using a monopod to help support the equipment. Keep one hand as close to the far end of the lens as possible to reduce camera shake. A tripod is ok, but it is more restrictive because it can't move like a monopod.

Flash:

You can capture the action with a flash and shoot more creative works with a pan/tilt. However, please note that flash is forbidden in some sports because it will distract athletes. If you use it, remember that its charging speed is not fast enough to take pictures continuously.

Illuminate the subject with a flash in a dark environment. The flash won't distract the swimmer.

Step 4 capture the action

When you capture motion, you need a higher shutter speed to get vivid and clear images. It takes some experience to find the lowest shutter speed required for various movements. But as a guiding principle, the minimum shutter speed should be four times that of the hand-held speed. Handheld speed is the reciprocal of focal length. If a 300 mm lens is used; Then the hand speed should be 1/300 s. So if you want to capture the action, you should use the shutter speed of11200. To do this, you can use a larger aperture and a higher ISO to shoot. However, we should use higher ISO as the last resort, because it will introduce too much noise into the image.

In this case, a faster shutter speed is used to capture motion.

Step 5 shake the racket

Sometimes, seeing all the details may not be attractive, because you may just want to highlight the action or "give life" to it. In this case, shaking is a common skill. To do this, you need to move your camera to blur the background. At this time, in order to capture the motion of the object, a flash can be used to generate high contrast between the object and the surrounding image. Use shutter first, and estimate the shutter speed required for the effect to be shot. The correct shutter speed depends on the lens, the moving speed of the subject and the distance from the subject. Experiment is the best way to know these parameters.

The photographer followed the cyclist in front, keeping the object clear with a fast shutter speed, but the shutter speed was slow enough to blur the background.