Photographing sports or action with your digital camera can be fun and exciting! With just a little investment of time and practice, you should be able to create interesting and eye-catching action shots wherever you go.
First, we should go over a few points about your particular digital camera to make sure you have the necessary features to photograph your action subjects. Refer briefly to your camera manual and study some of the pages that explain particular features your digital camera may or may not have. You should be able to shoot action and sports subjects if your camera has manual shutter speed and aperture settings as well as automatic ones. This is important because sometimes, you may want to capture an action photograph and illustrate the motion of the object or subject. Having manual settings that you can alter will be the only way you can change the look of ‘movement’ in some of your images. We will get into the different types of action in the following paragraphs.
Stop Action or Freeze Motion
With very little practice, you will be able to capture an action shot and literally ‘freeze’ your subject practically mid-air. Let’s use an off-road race for an example in this technique. As you are watching the competing cars and/or trucks driving past you, you will see them hit dips and bumps, and go ‘airborne’ for a second before they come back to earth and carry on driving forward. Moments like those airborne seconds are a perfect time to snap off a shot or two. To experiment with this technique, check your camera’s manual and see how fast the shutter speed is when your camera is in automatic shooting mode. If the speed is at least 1/125th of a second, you probably won’t have to adjust your shutter speed manually. Many digital cameras are ‘smart’ enough to adjust for fast action without any extra programming on your part. However, if you find that you need a faster shutter speed in order to properly ‘freeze’ the action of the vehicles racing, find the Shutter Priority mode on your camera and manually adjust the shutter speed to 1/250th. It’s better to err in the direction of too much than too little in this case! When you adjust your shutter speed, your camera will automatically adjust the aperture, or amount of light it allows in to compensate for the fast speed you are now using to capture your images. While the vehicle you are photographing is in the upward arc of motion, it will seem motionless for about a split-second. If you manage to peel off a shot during this time, you will freeze the motion of your subject beautifully. If the bump or dip is particularly deep or large, the vehicle will catch quite a bit of ‘air,’ and you will see all four wheels off the ground at once, which is great to catch an image of. Another tip is to set your digital camera on ‘continuous shooting’ mode, which will allow your shutter to fire several times in fast succession. If you switch to continuous mode, your camera will more than likely adjust the aperture and shutter speed automatically, saving you a step of going to shutter speed priority mode. While in continuous shooting mode, if you start shooting right as the vehicle enters the dip or bump area, you should capture its progress throughout the entire process, and each of your frames will record the vehicle stopped at each point of its journey over the bump or dip. It will amaze you when you review your images, to see how beautifully ‘frozen’ in time your action photos are. Stop action is the most common, and perhaps the easiest technique in photographing action sports. Study your local newspaper’s sports section, and see if there are any photos of basketball players in action. You will see that most of the photos show the players stopped in action as they shoot a basket.
One more tip about stopped action. Depending upon where you are, and the shooting conditions available, you may need to use your flash to aid in your ‘action-stopping’ image capturing process. Outdoor racing of any sort, whether it is car, motorcycle, horse, or greyhound racing, will practically never need the use of a flash, because you will most likely be outdoors on a partially or totally sunny day. Light is not an issue in most cases of outdoor sports. However, once you take your camera indoors to a basketball game in a high school or college gymnasium, you will see that your lighting scenario changes slightly, or significantly. In the case of a well-lit gym, you will have no problem, depending on the type of lighting. If you choose to photograph basketball players in action, you may find your photo coloration ‘shifting’ toward yellowish. If this is the case, activate your fill flash on the high position and continue shooting. You should see a difference in the coloration of your images immediately. You will also probably need to be a little closer to your subject once you go indoors, as your flash will not carry too far if you are zooming in with a telephoto lens, as opposed to sitting near a basket hoop sideline.
Blurred Action
Blurring the action of a sport player or a racing vehicle can be an interesting technique if done effectively. For this technique, there are two schools of thought! First, after you have captured dozens of stop action frames, look through all your images and you are sure to find at least a few that did not freeze the action enough. You’ll probably find several images that have a blurring effect to them. This is caused by your camera not quite catching the action at the right moment, causing the subject to blur slightly, or sometimes, even blur radically. Even though the instances of error are much less with a digital camera than with a manual one, there will still be some blurred images in your collection after you’ve taken many action shots in one sitting. You will also find that if you are photographing a basketball game, there are plenty of moments where your stop action image will turn out blurry. In this kind of action, blurring occurs when your subject suddenly moves just as your shutter has fired. Some blurring can create a very interesting and compelling image, other times, blurring can be infuriating, ruining your perfect image! If you feel you can’t count on ‘accidental’ blurred action shots to happen, you can refer to your camera manual about how to slow down your shutter speed in order to accomplish a blurring effect. Your manual may direct you to change the shutter speed, and also the aperture, because you’ll need to adjust the amount of light that your camera records in order to create an effectively blurred shot. Your camera manual will help you to decide which priority to use when trying to obtain blurring. Either way, blurred action images can be fun and interesting to capture.
Panned Action
Saving the most difficult technique for last, I suggest you practice this technique frequently before trying it out on a real race or sport game. Panned action is a difficult, but incredibly effective technique to capture action with. It is much easier to accomplish if you are using a manual camera in this case. However, it can be done with a digital camera, but it takes a bit more time and effort. Luckily, with a digital camera, you can delete your unwanted images immediately, which is very handy, as you’ll need a lot of available memory space to practice this technique with! Panned action looks like this: The front of your subject will retain fairly strong focus as gradually, the back of the subject will blur, but as it blurs, a long, streaking trail will also appear behind the subject, seemingly extending it profoundly. This really creates the sensation of movement like no other technique can. However, it is rather difficult to get perfect panned action shots every time. How you accomplish this effect is a little tricky at first, but you can get the hang of it if you practice. With your digital camera in the normal automatic mode, focus on your subject by pressing halfway down on the shutter as you normally would As you are pressing halfway down to focus, physically move your camera sideways, following the subject and press the shutter all the way, while still moving your camera. This may feel or seem a little strange at first, but it does work. If you can’t get an effective ‘end trail’ behind your subject, adjust your shutter speed to be a little slower, that way, you are forcing your camera to give you more time to press down the shutter button while moving your camera at the same moment. Your camera manual may even direct you on how to accomplish this type of action using your particular digital camera. If not, you can just experiment yourself until you happen upon a combination of technique and shutter speed settings that will allow you to capture a great panned action shot. Don’t get too frustrated with this technique. It just takes a great deal of time and experimentation with a digital camera to perfect it. Once you do capture a perfect panned action image, it will amaze you and those around you!
Have fun experimenting with these sports action photography techniques!
