Picture Perfect - Taking good photos of gameplay

strazzere · **Picture Perfect - Taking good photos of gameplay -** 07-31-2006, 01:05 PM

Taking pictures may seem pretty easy - however taking a good shot is relatively hard.

If you leave your camera on auto - your receive blurry photos, and won't be able to recognize the player your taking the picture of!

Now - do you need to spend a billion dollars on an SLR camera to take a quality shot? No - but they are amazing cameras!

Currently These are the settings I used in my camera - mess around with your own settings and see what works best.

Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec.
Lens Aperture: F/5.6
ISO Speed: ISO-1600

What does this mean? Well - basicly you need a high shutter speed to capture the picture without making it blurry. The slower your shutter speed, the more light goes into your camera. This is good for night scenes like the stars, where you want the light to come in. For a *crisp* action shot, anything over 1/400 will look the same, while 1/200-1/400 may yield a little blur (depending on the speed of the player). Below 200 may be very blurry.

Next important information is the ISO speed. The higher this is - the grainer the picture can get. 1600 is very high, a normaly picture I take will us 100ish ISO. The give and take between ISO speed and shutter speed is this.

With a higher shutter speed, less light is taken into the sensor on the camera, giving you a darker picture. To counter this, you must use a higher ISO speed - this gives you a grainier picture.

Basicly, find that "Manual" setting for your camera, and crank up your shutter speed. Play around with it. A good way to keep the ISO relatively low, with the shutter speed higher is having a good light source. This can be hard in a gym. Try to angle your shot so the lighting on the cieling is included - then just crop that lighting out. If your aiming to the floor - less light is going directly into the sensor.

For timing of shots, if you don't have a continously shooting camera, it may be harder for you to get the shot. Just try to remember this. Pick you subject - if you want someone passing, stay with them. Know the flow of the action, if the attack is coming, get a good shot of the person. Then work from there - slowly taking the shot a little more delayed after the hit. If you can preexpose your camera (normally half a button press) - do this, it will speed your camera up.

Lastly, remember your using digital (most people will be atleast). Take a full memory card worth of shots - and view them AFTER the game. The worse is trying to look if you have a good shot - and miss a great shot while viewing your lcd screen. Better yet, you can turn off the "review" feature - which can often speed your camera up even more.

Happy shooting, post any questions you have if you want any more indepth explainations. I figured I'd post a quick and dirty on shooting vball shots, don't want to overload anyone with to much lingo!

BHitterDPasser · 07-31-2006, 01:54 PM

The biggest problem I have is that with your typical Point and Shoot camera, is that you have so little control over shutter speed. Sure there are "sport" settings and "night" settings but they only suggest what the camera shutter should do.

I have had much better luck outside than inside with my PAS camera just because sunlight is normally so much brighter than indoor light. I also recommend TURNING OFF THE FLASH. Not only will this speed up the camera, it will not distract the player(s). Furthermore, anything more than 2m-3m (~6' - 10') won't get illuminated with a flash anyhow.

Thanks for the tips, Straz.

-BHdp

strazzere · 07-31-2006, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BHitterDPasser

The biggest problem I have is that with your typical Point and Shoot camera, is that you have so little control over shutter speed. Sure there are "sport" settings and "night" settings but they only suggest what the camera shutter should do.

Yea - if you don't have a manual setting on your camera, you'd better hope that "sports" mode will cut it.

NewEnglandRT · 08-01-2006, 12:16 AM

Most indoor sporting events that do allow photography will usually ask you to turn off the flash as not to blind the participants. If your camera doesn't have a switch... tape it. Or, you may have to tape your broken nose when the 6'10 225 Middle can't see his block because you're trying to snap your OH buddy's great form.