Aside from the exposure settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO), there are a number of other important things to think about when using your camera. A lot of the time, you may not need to worry about them. But, when I go out to take photos at a sporting event, there are a series of settings that I routinely think about changing.

Here’s a quick rundown, so you can think about them next time too…

Autofocus Mode. On my Canon t1i, I can choose between One Shot Focus, AI Servo, or AI Focus (a hybrid of the two). Whenever I get ready to shoot sports, I immediately flip the autofocus mode to AI Servo. This tells the camera to continuously focus on the focus point until I take a picture, and the camera will continually refocus if the subject moves.

Why is this important? Well, in sports… people move. You also need to anticipate the action to get those good shots. So I spend a lot of time watching the game through the viewfinder with my finger halfway down on the shutter release button. This gets the camera to pre-focus on the moving subject, and when it’s action time I press the button down the rest of the way.

Autofocus Point Selection. On my Canon t1i, there are 9 focusing points. If you don’t change anything, the camera automatically selects which point it thinks it should focus on. Sometimes this works out, sometimes this doesn’t. If I’m shooting a group of people standing still, this isn’t a big deal. I can let go of the shutter release button, and let the camera choose a new focus point.

If, on the other hand, I’m in the middle of a football game… I don’t have time for second chances. When there are a lot of bodies around, I want to choose where the camera focuses. As a result, I generally manually choose a point, and it’s usually the center point. This way, the camera will focus on whatever I’m pointing the camera at.

In some sports (like wrestling), you don’t have to worry about the extra bodies and the camera will be able to do a much better job of picking out what it should focus on. As a result I’ve experimented with using the automatic point selection, because that frees me up from pointing the center of the lens directly at my subject.

This is potentially one of the biggest problems with not adjusting your settings for sports, though. If your camera is constantly guessing at the wrong focus point, try manual selection and see if that helps.

Continuous Shot. Continuous shot mode was made for sports. It’s hard to guess precisely when the best moment of action will be, and using continuous mode you can take two or three frames and hope that one of them comes out great.

Be careful how long you hold the shutter down, though. On the one hand, its a great way to fill up your memory cards too quickly. However, it can also fill up the internal memory (the buffer) on your camera and cause it to shut down for a few seconds until it finishes writing all the image data.

I found this out the hard way during a 55-meter shuttle hurdle race. In the race, a team of four sprinters take turns racing down a 55 meter stretch of track. The result is that in a matter of 20 to 25 seconds, four guys have zoomed by my camera and I’m trying to take pictures of all of them. I accidentally clipped off too many shots during the first leg of the relay, and the camera was struggling to empty the buffer and keep up for the rest of the (very brief) race.

Finally, Exposure. To me, the three settings above constitute “sports mode.” It gets my camera all set up to focus on action and take continuous shots. Once that’s done, I can worry about nailing down an acceptable exposure (or letting the camera do it in aperture-priority mode).

I was looking through the Google Analytics data today, and I came across this question that someone had searched for: Is the Canon 85mm f/1.8 a good lens for night football photography?

I own a Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens. I love it, for certain things. Night football photography is not one of them. Keep reading…

Photo by: Viele Geischter.

This photo of some football (soccer) players posing together came out of the recent uploads section of Flickr. It’s a great illustration of how to take a quick posed shot outside in the afternoon: find some shade! Look in the background (or in the other pictures in the photostream) and you’ll notice it’s a very bright, sunny day. Put the three lads out in the sun, and they’ll be squinting and have some harsh shadows all over. Instead, they’re sitting in the shade and they’ve got some nice, soft light all around them. One problem with this is your background (if it’s in the sun) will usually get blown out, so don’t expect to get a lot of definition out of it. It can also help to throw in a little bit of fill light from a flash, but you don’t want to over do it.

Photo by: Ft. Couch Potatoes.

This snapshot of some cyclists taking a break came out of the recent uploads section of Flickr. Two things of interest here. One, a “sports” shot doesn’t necessarily have to be an action shot. Those are cool and all, but at the end of the day a lot of sports shots start looking alike – a cyclist riding down the road, a football player making a catcher, a pitcher tossing a ball. The really cool, defining pictures catch moments and faces that draw you to the picture. Which brings me to the second point. I love the way the guys are just standing around, in the middle of doing their usual stuff, and they looked over at the camera. It’s a lot more candid than a “Get together for a group picture!” group shot, but at the same time everyone (except the one guy checking his bike) is looking at the camera. Nice capture.

Photo by: dangorman16.

I didn’t have any inspiration as to what to look for today, so I headed to the recent uploads section of Flickr. There were some slim pickins, and it took me about a dozen reloads before I found this picture which kind of caught my eye. Composition is tough with sports pictures, since you’re often shooting something that’s happening in a split second and you’re confined by your lens and your position relative to the players. So, while this may not be the best composition for this image (I’d be curious to see what the field around the player looked like at the time), the image is still cool. It’s a good example of capturing the right moment at the right time. It looks like the player just landed a nice header going off to his left, and his body is still all contorted from the effort. Not a whole lot o’ time in which to capture that… good job.

Photo by: richseow.

Found this pic in the recent uploads of Flickr. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but when I saw a little thumbnail of a sports pic I thought I’d check it out and see if it was any good. Turned out to be a decent shot of a rugby game in Singapore. There’s a quick enough shutter speed (1/1250th of a second) that there’s no motion blur at all. However, the image seems to be a little bit under-exposed. The turf is fine – nice and saturated – but the players are a little dark. This is exacerbated by the fact that they’re shadowed from the sun (note the faint shadow pointing emanating from #9′s foot). Mightta been a good candidate for an exposure compensation adjustment or just a little tweaking in Lightroom.

Photo by Bo No Bo.

Summer is awesome. But, one of the good things about fall is that football season arrives. Over the years, I’ve lost interest in most other sports, but college football is fun to watch, and high school football is even more fun when you get to roam the sidelines and take pictures of the action. That’s why I dove into the “Football” tag and looked for something good. This might not be the sexiest action pic, but it’s got all the good basics. Tight focus on the subject (the quarterback) and a quick shutter to eliminate the blur. I wonder where the QB is going to throw that ball…

On a side note, it was interesting to see the ratio of soccer pics to American football pics in the “Football” tag. I wonder if that’ll change come the fall/winter…

Photo by vramak.

I wanted to look through some sports pictures today. Although this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I started flicking through Flickr, it is too cool. Like a lot of people commented, the timing here is perfect. I like the color. Only thing that seems a bit odd is the pose. If the player is jumping like that, I’d assume he’s trying to do some kind of bicycle kick – which means that his foot should be coming up under the ball. Instead it looks like he’s kind of drop kicking the ball kung fu style…