Shoot Sports Photos

[mrbillf]

Hi,

I do a lot of sports photos but mainly soccer photography. Even though I get a lot of good shots there is always the odd occassion that a number of shots don't just look right. Like a little blury. I have a funny feeling that I may not have my D70 set correctly in the focus settings.

Most times I have the focus set to single point, rather the closest objects and I something set the ISO a little higher. Can anyone please suggest what would be the best setting or should I set the focus points to the 7 point setting. I'm really not 100% sure.

Thanks
Bill

[jethro]

good luck trying to hold it together. quite a few guys here that shoot sport all the time have the same problem and its an inherrant problem with the d70. it can happen on any afs lens and is not consistent. i have learnt over thousands of shots that the best way to overcome it to some degree is to be shooting in afc mode and using the sport selector. this will automatically get you into afc mode. usually a bit of up and down movement and not side to side movement will give you a lock on. centre top and bottom focus seems ok but watch cropping. side to side focusing usually ends up crap and OOF . . keep trying you will definately get the knack of it. because the nature of the beast is for fast focusing and quick reaction time i have found that there is no better remedy than practise.

[mrbillf]

Well, I wouldn't have thought to put it in sports and afc. I've been taking them in either M or A - aperture priority mode and afc.

I'll give the sports mode a go this week. However, I do agree with you about the practice, practice and more practice.

Thanks.

[PiroStitch]

If it's soccer, good luck as I mentioned to Frank the other day

For action photography, I keep mine on Manual Program, dynamic focus (and keep it on the centre block) and AF-C. With soccer, it's extremely difficult as the player will move around in all dimensions (yes, even up and down sometimes ).

With stuff like racing, you can usually get away with using MF and having prepared settings as they usually take the racing line when going around corners. If they stray from that, then they lose time or crash out, hence why it's a tad bit easier to predict where the object will be next. I guess similar rule applies for rugby if the person is on the run.

That's my theory anyway

[mrbillf]

Yeah some good ideas and thoughts there. I've had some success with my soccer action shots but, I just wanted to improve them even more. Reason being is say out of ten shots I'll get 7 that come out great and 3 would be blurred. So, I suppose it's not a real issue these days with Digital where we can just delete them and start all over again....

You are dead right though, with soccer it's hard to predict the direct the players goes. While I've shot motor racing before and found that to be rather simple compared with soccer. Anyway, I'll battle on.

Thanks again guys.

[PiroStitch]

Mate, 70% success rate is pretty damn good Hehe but everyone's a perfectionist, me included so I understand how you feel about wanting to get a higher success rate.

[elffinarts]

I found that when covering medieval jousting or swordfighting (especially melee's) I'd work in manual mode and up the ISO and shutterspeed a fair bit. For jousting I found I coudnt shoot with any less than a 1/3000th speed. Even then had the odd spot of motion blur as the mounted knights clashed.

I had to cover one night event where the lighting failed (was meant to be a small field surrounded by floodlights and about 70 lit braziers - but had bugger all light) and the old SB28 had a real workout and I still didnt get a decent shot out of the event.

As for swapping between AF-S and AF-C ..... I've not yet tried using the different function. What differences are there in how the lens works in these two modes?