Manual for sports photography?

lifeinfocus

When somebody says they shoot manual for sports photography. What does that really mean? Does it mean that they lock in shutter, aperture and ISO? Does it mean they also use manual focus? Do they set shutter and aperture, but use Auto ISO?

This came up in a discussion at our local camera club meeting last night. I shoot manual for static images, but not sports. I am not a full time professional photog.

Any and all comments welcome. Thanks in advance for listening.

Thanks
Phil

ian408

It means you set aperture, shutter & iso and adjust accordingly as required.

johng

What Ian said. The reason why so many sports photographers shoot manual exposure is that the most important thing to have exposed properly is a player's face. When you have faces under hats, in helmets and/or you have bright white uniforms reflecting light vs dark uniforms and/or bright backgrounds (sky, ad boards on a court etc) - your camera's metering can shift all over the place. When, in reality, you don't need settings to fluctuate that much.

You have to realize that you have to change those settings as light levels change or when you change your shooting position relative to the sun and the action.

Just using exposure compensation doesn't tend to work as well - again think about a player in dark uniform vs. player in white uniform - if you're just relying on EC to get "faces" right you're going to over or under expose one or the other.

Now, where you are STILL out of luck is when you have bright light and a mix of Caucasian and African-American skin - especially in helmets.

Now, if you're in a situation where sun is moving in and out of clouds, manual may not be the best option. But, most times it works better.

jhefti

The problem with shooting sports, especially under stadium lights, is that the backgrounds usually have highly variable illumination. Thus, letting the camera decide on the exposure (in whatever semi-auto mode) usually results in inconsistent exposures. I do know some sports shooters that use aperture-priority mode, but I notice that their images are very inconsistent. Most of us use full manual exposure mode, but with autofocus for the most part. I sometimes pre-focus on where I think the action is going to be--the goalkeeper in soccer for example--but most games are too fast to manually focus.

One trick that works for me is to find some homogeneous part of field to use as a standard for metering. Often this is just the grass. If the light is changing I'll frequently check the meter using the grass, just to be sure how I'm doing.

As others said, you want to get the subjects properly exposed. I'll take some test shots to get this right, then see how the grass looks with these settings. I'll use this as a standard as the game continues under changing light to keep my exposure correct.

Another challenge is that many stadiums have inconsistent lighting. For example, I regularly shoot at AT&T Park and notice that home plate is about 2/3 of a stop darker than the pitcher's mound. I will change the ISO accordingly if I want to get the batter.

lifeinfocus

Thank you all. This a great combination of information. I plan on summarize what is said here and present it our camera club. I will test in the near future.

Phil

jmphotocraft

Absolutely, if light is fairly consistent. Only thing I'll add to the good advice above is that I have an unconfirmed suspicion that autofocus works better and drive speed is a little faster when the camera doesn't have to think about exposure.

A couple examples where I was glad I was shooting manual exposure:





While it's possible to shoot sports with manual focus, I haven't found a need to. You'll get waaaaay fewer keepers.

lifeinfocus

jmphotocraft wrote: »

Absolutely, if light is fairly consistent. Only thing I'll add to the good advice above is that I have an unconfirmed suspicion that autofocus works better and drive speed is a little faster when the camera doesn't have to think about exposure.

A couple examples where I was glad I was shooting manual exposure:

While it's possible to shoot sports with manual focus, I haven't found a need to. You'll get waaaaay fewer keepers.

Thank you. I forwarded the link to this forum to a couple of our photo club www.midlandcameraclub.org members. They were impressed and appreciative.
Phil

photodad1

I shoot mostly manual mode, auto focus, as I find my camera, Canon 1D Mark III responses faster then the Av mode. I also shoot RAW, not jpeg. At night I will meter off the grass, not the uniforms. Most high school fields I use ISO 3200, shutter 1/400. I'll shoot Av mode only when the clouds are partially blocking the sun.

puzzledpaul

Long ... and sometimes lively ... thread about modes.

Whilst it's associated with wildlife rather than sports, I'd suggest there are similar issues to consider.

pp


http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/82981-Manual-vs-Av-and-Other-Modes

Zerodog

For me shooting manual is all about consistency of exposure for fast processing. If I shoot auto anything the exposure varies shot to shot. This leads to much more processing time for any event. Manual for me 95% of the time.

JimKarczewski

I agree with ZeroDog. Consistency for processing. I shoot RAW on sports, but typically I never adjust exposure, just Clarity and maybe some Contrast in LR before processing them and sending off to the paper. Now, this does vary by sport as well. Night sports (Football, Soccer) Manual all the way. Daytime sports (baseball, softball) are manual depending on the time of day, sometimes it will be Av with a compensation if it's going to be a transitional game (day->night.) Basketball, Manual as I use flashes and know what I'm going to get every time. Volleyball, Manual. Gyms don't change unless they have skylights, which is very rare in these parts. Same with Swimming.

bluesman graham

Absalutely agree with all the above BUT!!, I also do believe in manual focus!,
I use a remote camera for behind goal shots @ football (Soccer) games & this needs to be set on manual focus . I grew up with 35mm cameras on manual ie Nikon F2/3's & with a 300 2.8 AIs you had to hit focus bloody quick at matches in them days lol.
Last week my servo motor on my 70-200 VR packed in at a game, most people would have packed it away but I shot the match using manual focus!. my keeper rate was down just 10%!! with 3 national paper uses & 1 Magazine. I put this down to my grounding in earlier manual focusing background & some bloody good luck thumb. Kind regards Graham.

jmphotocraft

bluesman graham wrote: »

Last week my servo motor on my 70-200 VR packed in at a game, most people would have packed it away but I shot the match using manual focus!. my keeper rate was down just 10%!!

Wow, what was your aperture, like f/8??

lifeinfocus

Thanks to all responders. Post processing consistency seems to be important reason to use manual as much as possible.

Phil

jhefti

bluesman graham wrote: »

Absalutely agree with all the above BUT!!, I also do believe in manual focus!,
I use a remote camera for behind goal shots @ football (Soccer) games & this needs to be set on manual focus . I grew up with 35mm cameras on manual ie Nikon F2/3's & with a 300 2.8 AIs you had to hit focus bloody quick at matches in them days lol.
Last week my servo motor on my 70-200 VR packed in at a game, most people would have packed it away but I shot the match using manual focus!. my keeper rate was down just 10%!! with 3 national paper uses & 1 Magazine. I put this down to my grounding in earlier manual focusing background & some bloody good luck thumb. Kind regards Graham.

There certainly are instances when MF is the way to go. I use it in all remotes, for example. Behind the goal you really have no choice but MF, as otherwise you'll just get a lot of pretty shots of the net with acton blurs in the background. I also use it in front of the net on occasion.

That said, not sure I'd want to shoot a whole game on MF; I'm not that good!