First atttempt at sports photography

**scottish steve** · 06-21-2012, 04:43 AM

It was a nice sunny day today so I went down to the local public basketball courts and got in everybody's way. Having only a 35mm prime with me meant I had to get rather close, but the guys were quite unfazed and I did notice a certain increased exertion at each hoop when I made my way over with my large nikon bag. I sat on the hoop, about a foot away from the stantion and clicked away. I must say, the camera did ALL the work but I was very please at several shots. I've converted these to 1250 MP on the long side and slightly oversharpened them for my taste, in the hope that this will bring out the best in them. I assure you these are al very sharp, in-focus and noise-free. Any tips for imporvement?

**scottish steve** · 06-21-2012, 04:46 AM

apart from learning to type of course!

**Oblique Human** · 06-21-2012, 07:11 AM

I really like the 3rd photo with the two guys taking flight.

**cdrross** · 06-21-2012, 01:44 PM

Overall not bad. I would reduce the DoF in a couple of them for better subject isolation.

**Compaq** · 06-21-2012, 02:02 PM

Also, try not to cut off limbs. #2's my favourite, that's a nice capture!

**AdrianR** · 06-21-2012, 05:36 PM

+1 on cdrross comment about the depth-of-field...we need to concentrate on the players, not on their surroundings.
Also, for effect, I prefer high-contrast B&W for sports/action pics.

**shaveitoff** · 06-21-2012, 06:22 PM

These are good pictures. For sports shooting, you want to let you camera do most of the work for you. What you can do is set the shutter so that as you hold down the button the camera is taking as many exposures per second as possible. I'm not sure what that function will be called on your camera. That way, you can have many exposures and the one(s) that seems just right will pop out for you as you review the shots later. I'd just put the camera on its sports setting and work more on framing the shot, figuring out how zoomed in you want to be etc. For example, of the top 4 pics, the upper right is my favourite, because you can see the player going for the ball and the ball itself. The shot seems complete that way. The bottom left of the top four looks like the player has just taken a shot, but we don't see the ball so there seems to be something missing. If you had been farther back and got the ball in the shot, it would tell me the complete story. But you do have him in mid-air, which is great.

Another trick you could try if there is a lot of movement by the subject is when the shutter is set to continuously shoot, look through the viewfinder with your right eye, but follow the action with your left eye. I have done this to capture birds on flight. Essentially, I have the camera up to my face, but I am mainly watching the action with my left eye while my right eye is looking through the viewfinder. As with any photography, you will get lots of shots that you just toss out, but that is part of photography, especially for moving subjects.

**scottish steve** · 06-21-2012, 08:13 PM

Thanks for the comments. In the shot second down on the right, the ball was gone, having been thrown quite fast. Remember I was using a 35mm prime for these, so no zooming! And my angle of field is also quite small. I deliberately chose an aperture to give me 1/2500 to 1/3200 shutter speed- in this case it was 2.8, but I also wanted one which didn't limit the dof too much as I wanted the whole of the players to be sharp. I think the slowest shutter speed was 1/1250 in the 'funny' shot where the ball is being fumbled. If I had had to, I would have increased the ISO as I didn't want to go below 2.8. You can see in one of the shoots below, where the camera has focussed on the face of one of the players but the other one (on the righ) is OOF. Didn't want to exacerbate that issue. I am very happy that I didn't need to crop much, or straighten. There were several times when the ball came very close to hitting the camera since I was so close, of which the players were quite conscious (not to mention myself!), but I didn't let it change my shooting strategy. I do have a multiframe option, but chose not to use it. Next time I'll give it a try, but I feel that shooting 6 frames per second wouldn't have allowed the lens enough time to refocus. Maybe I'm wrong in this?

**scottish steve** · 06-21-2012, 08:19 PM

And the last one I kept from that day.

**scottish steve** · 06-22-2012, 12:54 PM

Hi Compaq
I think that reworking looks more photographic, but less natural. I'm a little crestfallen you consider most of these of insufficient std to keep. If we number them as they appear 1 - 10, how many would you keep on-file?

**scottish steve** · 06-22-2012, 12:55 PM

my last post out of sequence, see post number 10

**AllenG** · 06-22-2012, 03:56 PM

One of the best tips I was given was to shoot a little wider than you want and then crop the final image down. It will allow you to keep the ball from disappearing out of frame such as in the last image you posted.

**Argonaut** · 06-22-2012, 04:04 PM

I see some nice photos, but horrible shooting technique. Hand in the cookie jar boys! Follow through!

**Compaq** · 06-22-2012, 04:59 PM

I played a little with my favourite shot. There are many I'd throw in the thrash, but this one is very good! Harsh monochrome conversion. Also applied a little lens blur, and masked in certain parts to emulate a proper DOF. Burned the bodies a little, to emphasize the muscles more. Cropped out a distracting guy, and sharpened. Lastly, added a black frame, 30 pixels wide. Both added in this post, to better show the differences. Not quite happy with the dimensions after the crop, but still better imo :)