The Shed

Sports Photography is Hard, but Not Impossible. February 12, 2009

Sports  are, by far, the most difficult thing in the world to shoot. Perfecting Low-light shots was my original goal for this semester, but I’ve given careful consideration to include sports photography as well.

After my first trip to the Colonial Life Arena, I realized I had a LOT of work to do. It’s rather discouraging to spend an entire memory card shooting an event, only to come home and realize that the viewfinder is a dirty, dirty liar — and the fact that all of your photos were unusable. Practically having thrown my first sports opportunity away, I immediately signed up for the next game slot, praying that I could have one more opportunity to right my wrong.

The second trip to the Arena was much more satisfying. I heeded the advice of my higher-ups and set my camera to Shutter Priority. What a difference! Though I had to toy around with the aperture a little bit, the camera practically did the work itself. It set my camera to the appropriate shutter speed for the conditions, and not once did I have to do any chimping. As a matter of fact, I shot almost 30 pictures before taking a break, and all of them were well exposed.

I guess the moral of the story is this: if you’re going to shoot sports TURN ON SHUTTER PRIORITY. If you can’t stand having shutter priority on (I know it’s easier just to pop it on Manual sometimes..), MAKE SURE you have your camera set to a shutter speed greater than 1/250th of a second. Anything slower than that will show movement as a blur, thus ruining any hopes you had for an impact photograph. I hope that helps!