I shot a lot of sports photography and in order to do so I have created a recipe for shooting that works well for me. Now I’m not saying that my recipe will turn out for me but it has netted me a steady flow of sport images over the years. It’s really simple; keep your shutter speed equal to or greater than the effective length of your lens. Making sure you never go below 1/100 of a second. I try to keep my shutter speed at twice the focal length of the lens I am shooting with. This means if I am shooting with my Sigma 70-200 I want my shutter to be working at 1/400 a second at the very least. Now I know I can go lower but by keeping it faster than or equal to that I am able to get sharp crisp images. Now that woks if I don’t want motion blur. If I want motion blur in an image then I have to adjust from there.
One other thing I do is attempt to keep my iso as low as I can when I shoot. This is normally not a problem when I am outdoors shooting but when I go inside to an arean this can become more difficult to do.
On most digital camera there will be a running man icon. This sets the camera to. On most cameras this will increase the iso settings and work at a faster shutter speed. This is where I started taking my action shots at and I made many images like this. Once I was comfortable shooting the action I started experimenting with the other settings and found that Shutter Priority or Time Value was where I wanted to be.
A few notes I want to make before I close this post. If you are shooting sports for the first time, or if it’s a new team or event, make sure you watch the performance a few times through before you start shooting. I know this is not always possible but if it is a team that has a routine, like cheerleading. Then watching the routine will allow you to determine what you want to shoot. Also try to pay attention to your backgrounds. There is nothing more frustrating than making a great sports image and then looking at it and realize that the background is of a mess.
