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I suck at telephoto/sports
It's dawning on me that using a telephoto lens requires technique I had not previously imagined. Simply jacking up the shutter speed to 1/1000 or 1/2000/sec isn't going to stop motion and give me a nice, sharp photo. There's clearly something wrong with my telephoto technique and that's why I've come here for help. I've never really been happy with the photos I get with this lens when handheld. It's gotta be me, right? Perhaps my expectations are off the mark. I look at some of the action shots here (Randy Smugmug, you're the boy) and mine are nowhere close.
For you sports shooters or high speed shutter peeps out there, aside from mastering the AF on your camera (I seem to not be able to track moving subjects very well yet—the AI Servo on my 30D seems a tad slow in this regard) what else can I do to get better shots of frozen time? There must be some tried and true techniques. Does 1/4000 fix the problem? Part of me is considering getting better at manual focus as well, something I haven't done with regularity since I was a teenager.
Two examples, taken on a monopod, at 1/1600 and 1/2000 respectively, at f/5.0 with a Canon EF 70-200 f/4L. Quickie processing in LR 1.4.1 and default sharpening (amount 25).
For you sports shooters or high speed shutter peeps out there, aside from mastering the AF on your camera (I seem to not be able to track moving subjects very well yet—the AI Servo on my 30D seems a tad slow in this regard) what else can I do to get better shots of frozen time? There must be some tried and true techniques. Does 1/4000 fix the problem? Part of me is considering getting better at manual focus as well, something I haven't done with regularity since I was a teenager.
Two examples, taken on a monopod, at 1/1600 and 1/2000 respectively, at f/5.0 with a Canon EF 70-200 f/4L. Quickie processing in LR 1.4.1 and default sharpening (amount 25).
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I find that 1/1000th is generally enough shutter speed for nearly all parts of the body, may be 1/1500th if you really want the fastest motion limb to be "stop-action". Faster than that won't really help you unless you're trying to stop a hit ball. I usually find I like the look of my photos at 1/1000th-1/1500th because if the fastest moving element in the frame is just a slight bit blurred from extreme motion, but the rest of the person is sharp, it really helps show the speed and motion without compromising anything. So, I don't try to stop the action of hit/kicked softballs, soccer balls, etc..
Assuming you have optics capable of delivering a sharp shot, in my shooting of kid's sports (mostly soccer), it was all about auto-focus technique and equipment. Proper focus is where I either got the sharpness I wanted or didn't and when a shot was not as sharp as I wanted, I'd often look at the grass at their feet and, sure enough, I'd see that the grass a little in front of or behind them was what was really sharp (a focus miss).
I'm a Nikon shooter, so I don't know the Canon terminology, but I can tell you generally how I set things up.
First, I use AF-C (continuous focus mode). The thing I practice the most is tracking the action with the center sensor with the shutter half-pressed and then I press the shutter at the moment I want to capture. The key for me is really learning how to both track the action with the center sensor (I do it from a monopod) and keep an eye on the action so you know where it's going and when you want to capture it. After enough practice, the tracking becomes second nature and you can do it subconciously while you are watching the action through the viewfinder.
Second, there are lots of other settings that influence the success of continuous focus mode. On my D2Xs, there are timing delays, multi-focus sensor modes, sensor patterns, etc... You'll have to find a sports-related article written about the focus sensor in your camera to really understand how the options available to you might help you as I don't know what your specific camera offers.
Third, lighting and type of uniform make a big difference. My auto-focus success rate goes down signficantly when the light is low. This just makes sense as there's just less light (and thus data) avalable to the focus sensor. The same is true of dark colored uniforms, particularly with a bright background. My daughter's softball uniforms are jet black this year and they are 5x harder to get good auto-focus on than her white soccer uniforms, particularly if there's a sunlit grass field in the background. There are times when I have had to switch to using a top sensor and focusing on the face because everything else was too dark for good focus data.
Fourth, equipment does make a difference. I started shooting soccer with a Nikon D70. I got a lot of great shots, but I was regularly frustrated by losing a meaningful number of good shots to back-focus. After having both lens and camera calibrated by Nikon to assure there was no back-focus bias in the system, I finally just realized that the auto-focus system sometimes just couldn't keep up with a running soccer player coming at you and thus it would lag behind giving me back-focus. In the end, I upgrade to a D2X and now I only see this problem occasionally in really poor light - it works great in normal light.
Fifth, if you have good light, you may want to shoot at f/5.6 or f/8 initially to give you more depth of field until you refine your technique. You might have to bump the ISO a bit to achieve the shutter speed you want, but nothing ruins a sports image faster than poor focus so that's a better tradeoff, even if you get a little more noise due to an increased ISO (though today's cameras are doing much better job with raised ISO). With the smaller aperture, you will sacrifice some blurred background, but again you have to get focus right first and then work on improving your technique so you can widen the aperture as you improve.
Sixth, get in tight. When I look at my first season of photos, they were all taken from too far away. In soccer, if the player doesn't fill two thirds of the vertical height of the frame, they are too far away (or you haven't zoomed in tight enough). Besides the advantage of composing a shot that gives you more detail on the player, this makes a ton of difference for auto-focus accuracy. The tighter my shot is, the better my auto-focus works. There are probably multiple forces at work causing this, but I know that a subject that is smaller than the actually auto-focus sensor is just never going to work optimally and this happens all the time when you try to focus on a player that's too far away. Logically, the focus sensor is getting a mix of data from the actual target and from the background and it does what you would expect - it gives you a focus compromise (resulting in back-focus). Some of the very newest cameras (D3 and D300) are trying to add color information to the focus logic to help mitigate some of these challenges, but it's best to avoid them.
Getting in tight involves even more practice on the tracking and framing of a moving subject because the tighter you are, the harder it is to track accurately and the less room for error you have on framing. But, this is critically important.
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A former sports shooter
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QUOTE=mercphoto]You were using AI-Servo focusing right? Next silly question, which AF sensors were enabled and are you CERTAIN that the player was covered by an active focus sensor?[/QUOTE]
Indeed, it was AI-Servo. Only the middle sensor was enabled. I would have to look at the shots in DPP to show the active sensor at the time of capture, but I would think so. I expected more from the monopod, so that makes me think it's probably more about the AF.
The Canon 30D is a good camera, but not a great sports camera.
The AF sensors are not that robust, and the AF is not that fast with lenses less than f2.8 The AF system in the 40D is significantly better and faster, even in dimmer light.
The 70-200f4 L is a great lens and should provide tack sharp images if used to its full capability.
Using the AF system to it full capability is an aquired skill, involving anticipation, which AF point to use, quality of the optics, quality of the lighting, etc. But the 30D will be somewhat limiting as a sport camera. That was never its design goal, I am certain.
Keep shooting and I bet you will find improvement.
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This is not a hard challenge for an auto-focus system. I would be really surprised if proper technique couldn't solve this problem with the 30D. What makes this doable is there are lots of good conditions:
- Good light
- Bright subject
- Dark background
- Subject motion mostly perpendicular to the camera
- Moderate focal length
If the center sensor is tracking the person's body (not the tennis racket or the ball) while using continuous focus with 1/1000th or greater, this should be very doable. Practice, practice, practice.Homepage • Popular
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I have to check in dp the sensor thing but you may be right. What I e xperienced was a lot of hunting and lag between the movement of the subject and the lens catching up.
As for the monopod, I didn't know what kind of SS I was going to get, so I just left it on. IS was also turned on.