My tryst with Indoor Sports Photography - NCAA Basketball
A couple of days ago Digital Photography School, my favorite Photoblog posted a few tips and tricks about shooting Indoor Sports. Shooting Indoor Sports is a great challenge / assignment to budding PhotoG's. Especially at this time of the year when it is snowing every other day and the temperature always stays below the freezing point.
To start with, I would highly recommend reading that post to anyone who is interested in shooting sports. Here is a brief overview of what they recommend:
To start with, I would highly recommend reading that post to anyone who is interested in shooting sports. Here is a brief overview of what they recommend:
- Watch for action and movement
- Set your camera to a high ISO setting
- Shoot with a fast shutter speed
- Use a lens with the lowest aperture possible
- Look for expression
- Shoot in RAW
Last month, Brad (p0larbare in Flickr) from the Boston Photo Mob (a flickr Community of PhotoG's from the Boston Area) invited mobbers to the Regis College in Weston, MA for taking photographs at a NCAA Division III Basketball game. It proved to be a great learning experience for me given the fact that it is the first time I tried to shoot sports. Well, that is if you don't count a couple of attempts with a P&S when friends were playing volleyball in the beach!
So what did I learn from this experience? What more can I add to the original post? Here is my tryst with Indoor Sports Photography..!
1. Know thy sport: This is very very important and in a way it actually relates to the first point in the Original post too. When you know the sport it you can actually prepare for the action well in advance. Knowing how the players strategize helps you getinto position quickly and capture that momentum changing play in its full glory. This is where being a couch potato (like your's truly) helps...! Hmmm, finally some good for what I have been doing all this time, ain't it?
2. What ISO is High ISO? : The article mentions using ISO 600 or 800. Most of the time, Indoor Basketball courts / gyms are poorly lit that it is tough pretty tough to get proper exposures at these shutter speeds. My Canon Digital Rebel XSi does a pretty good job with Noise Reduction at ISO 1600. If you have a prosumer SLR like a 40D or a D300, you may even want to use the ISO 3200.
3. What Shutter speed is fast enough? : The reason why I would choose the Highest usable ISO setting on the camera is to get the maximum possible shutter speed. The original post recommends 1/200 and that is pretty much where I started with on that day. It served me well for a good part of the Women's game. But there was noticeable motion blur in quite a few shots. So I quickly realized that this would do no good in the mens game. I moved to 1/400 to as high as 1/640th of a Second.
4. The Big Question: Which Lens? : So it is quite obvious that we should be using the widest possible aperture. I do not have a super zoom lens as of today. So my choices were the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens and the Nifty Fifty EF 50mm f/1.8. Although the former would have given me a few good shots, I chose the latter. Also this lens tends to be a bit soft when wide open. So I pretty much shot everything that day at f/2.0.
But the biggest advantage with an SLR is the very fact that you can change your lesnes. So, if you have more than one lens that you consider usable in such a situation, don't hesitate to switch over.
5. Where to focus / aim at? Shooting sports calls for a lot of practice and anticipation since it involves fast action. Shooting with the lens wide open makes the job of the PhotoG even worse giving a very low margin for error. The focus has to be SPOT on for the images to be viewable.
For the whole shoot, I pretty much used Center point focus and had only one thumb rule. Get that focus point somewhere on the body of the subject.
In hinsight, I have a better theory that could have given men better results. Most of the shots that I got on that day were shot with the camera vertically oriented. So, If I had chosen the extreme right focus point, it would most likely end up where the subject's face is. This would make images look sharper and better. Wouldn't it?
5 b) Get a grip: This is not a tip by itself. But something that I would most certainly love to have. A Battery Grip. It would make it lovely and comfortable for holding the camera vertically and add a more professional look to the body.
6. What Auto Focusing Mode? : Having solved the problem of what to focus, our next challenge is to make sure that the Camera focuses this point quickly. This is where shooting with a D-SLR poses a special challenge. Traditionally, the One shot Autofocus which is the default focusing mechanism works on a 2 step process. The first press of the shutter button, infact a half-press, locks the focus and the second push actuates the shutter. But when we are dealing with FAST action, it is pretty much impossible to push the button twice within that short span of time. The fact that the subject is moving makes life more miserable. So what do we do?
AI-Servo to the rescue. It is THE perfect mode for this kind of situations. Well, with the subject moving you can me sure that it will lock and track the focus point most of the time. It did the trick for me, at least!
7. Continuous Shooting / Burst Mode: No doubt that you need to shoot in Continuous mode. It drastically increases the probablity of plays that you may want to keep on the end of the day. That said, a lot of cameras have slower RAW burst speeds when compared to the jpegs. So it is essentially a trade off that we are talking here. But jpegs aren't that bad. If you can get to the venue some time in advance, take a few shots and get the perfect WhiteBalance, there is no reason why you shouldn't be shooting jpegs. But my XSi shoots 3.5 fps in RAW and it is pretty good for me. So I ended up shooting RAW.
Hat Tip: Although XSi can shoot 3.5 fps, it won't be able to deliver that if the Hi-ISO Noise Reduction (the incamera custom fn.) is enabled. It took a long time for me to figure this out! :-o)
7b) What if I still can't get that Fast Shutter speeds? Safely ignore this tip if you aren't shooting RAW. When shooting RAW, the images contain unprocessed data. So a image editing software has uncompressed data to work with and here one clever way on how you can get some advantage out of it. If you shutter speeds are hovering around a third to half a stop below what you actually intend, underexpose your shot by that. This can be corrected at a very early stage in your editing workflow without that much of a loss of quality.
8. What focal length / where to shoot from? : The answer to this question is heavily dependent on your answer to question 5. I chose the 50 mm which isn't quite a tele. So, I had to shoot from a feet or two from the baseline to get most of my better looking shots of the day. Thanks to Brad, we had permission to shoot from anywhere we wanted on that day. But you may not have that advantage every day.
On the other hand, If you have a longer lens, say a 70-200 or even a 55-250 for that matter, you can drop further behind. The advantage of these would be to get cool and unique angles. From the stands. From a balcony if there is one. From the center of the court. These would add vareity when you sit back and review your shots at the end of the day.
But if you are shooting with a 50mm like me, there is only one mantra: Move around. Don't stay glued to that one sweet spot that you identify minutes after the game starts.
9. Take a breather: Don't try to catch everything. Take a breather now and then. Enjoy the game. Enjoy what you do! Happy Photographing..! :-o)
Here are few of my shots from that shootout. Comments and criticism are welcome.
So what did I learn from this experience? What more can I add to the original post? Here is my tryst with Indoor Sports Photography..!
1. Know thy sport: This is very very important and in a way it actually relates to the first point in the Original post too. When you know the sport it you can actually prepare for the action well in advance. Knowing how the players strategize helps you getinto position quickly and capture that momentum changing play in its full glory. This is where being a couch potato (like your's truly) helps...! Hmmm, finally some good for what I have been doing all this time, ain't it?
2. What ISO is High ISO? : The article mentions using ISO 600 or 800. Most of the time, Indoor Basketball courts / gyms are poorly lit that it is tough pretty tough to get proper exposures at these shutter speeds. My Canon Digital Rebel XSi does a pretty good job with Noise Reduction at ISO 1600. If you have a prosumer SLR like a 40D or a D300, you may even want to use the ISO 3200.
3. What Shutter speed is fast enough? : The reason why I would choose the Highest usable ISO setting on the camera is to get the maximum possible shutter speed. The original post recommends 1/200 and that is pretty much where I started with on that day. It served me well for a good part of the Women's game. But there was noticeable motion blur in quite a few shots. So I quickly realized that this would do no good in the mens game. I moved to 1/400 to as high as 1/640th of a Second.
4. The Big Question: Which Lens? : So it is quite obvious that we should be using the widest possible aperture. I do not have a super zoom lens as of today. So my choices were the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens and the Nifty Fifty EF 50mm f/1.8. Although the former would have given me a few good shots, I chose the latter. Also this lens tends to be a bit soft when wide open. So I pretty much shot everything that day at f/2.0.
But the biggest advantage with an SLR is the very fact that you can change your lesnes. So, if you have more than one lens that you consider usable in such a situation, don't hesitate to switch over.
5. Where to focus / aim at? Shooting sports calls for a lot of practice and anticipation since it involves fast action. Shooting with the lens wide open makes the job of the PhotoG even worse giving a very low margin for error. The focus has to be SPOT on for the images to be viewable.
For the whole shoot, I pretty much used Center point focus and had only one thumb rule. Get that focus point somewhere on the body of the subject.
In hinsight, I have a better theory that could have given men better results. Most of the shots that I got on that day were shot with the camera vertically oriented. So, If I had chosen the extreme right focus point, it would most likely end up where the subject's face is. This would make images look sharper and better. Wouldn't it?
5 b) Get a grip: This is not a tip by itself. But something that I would most certainly love to have. A Battery Grip. It would make it lovely and comfortable for holding the camera vertically and add a more professional look to the body.
6. What Auto Focusing Mode? : Having solved the problem of what to focus, our next challenge is to make sure that the Camera focuses this point quickly. This is where shooting with a D-SLR poses a special challenge. Traditionally, the One shot Autofocus which is the default focusing mechanism works on a 2 step process. The first press of the shutter button, infact a half-press, locks the focus and the second push actuates the shutter. But when we are dealing with FAST action, it is pretty much impossible to push the button twice within that short span of time. The fact that the subject is moving makes life more miserable. So what do we do?
AI-Servo to the rescue. It is THE perfect mode for this kind of situations. Well, with the subject moving you can me sure that it will lock and track the focus point most of the time. It did the trick for me, at least!
7. Continuous Shooting / Burst Mode: No doubt that you need to shoot in Continuous mode. It drastically increases the probablity of plays that you may want to keep on the end of the day. That said, a lot of cameras have slower RAW burst speeds when compared to the jpegs. So it is essentially a trade off that we are talking here. But jpegs aren't that bad. If you can get to the venue some time in advance, take a few shots and get the perfect WhiteBalance, there is no reason why you shouldn't be shooting jpegs. But my XSi shoots 3.5 fps in RAW and it is pretty good for me. So I ended up shooting RAW.
Hat Tip: Although XSi can shoot 3.5 fps, it won't be able to deliver that if the Hi-ISO Noise Reduction (the incamera custom fn.) is enabled. It took a long time for me to figure this out! :-o)
7b) What if I still can't get that Fast Shutter speeds? Safely ignore this tip if you aren't shooting RAW. When shooting RAW, the images contain unprocessed data. So a image editing software has uncompressed data to work with and here one clever way on how you can get some advantage out of it. If you shutter speeds are hovering around a third to half a stop below what you actually intend, underexpose your shot by that. This can be corrected at a very early stage in your editing workflow without that much of a loss of quality.
8. What focal length / where to shoot from? : The answer to this question is heavily dependent on your answer to question 5. I chose the 50 mm which isn't quite a tele. So, I had to shoot from a feet or two from the baseline to get most of my better looking shots of the day. Thanks to Brad, we had permission to shoot from anywhere we wanted on that day. But you may not have that advantage every day.
On the other hand, If you have a longer lens, say a 70-200 or even a 55-250 for that matter, you can drop further behind. The advantage of these would be to get cool and unique angles. From the stands. From a balcony if there is one. From the center of the court. These would add vareity when you sit back and review your shots at the end of the day.
But if you are shooting with a 50mm like me, there is only one mantra: Move around. Don't stay glued to that one sweet spot that you identify minutes after the game starts.
9. Take a breather: Don't try to catch everything. Take a breather now and then. Enjoy the game. Enjoy what you do! Happy Photographing..! :-o)
Here are few of my shots from that shootout. Comments and criticism are welcome.
