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Sports photography - part 14 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

by Mike McNamee Published 01/08/2011

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Camera Settings

For every pronouncement made in a feature such as this there will be an exception to prove another rule! The availability of metadata and the ability to strip that metadata out of even thousands of files is invaluable in both analysing and perfecting your technique (we use ExifTool by Phil Harvey, see http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/). We have used these methods extensively for both this and previous studies, going all the way back to the data-back of the Nikon F3, which imprinted data in the margins of the film.

This background gives us a good idea of what people are using and how they are using it. The metadata from Ian Cook's cover shout is extracted here. It gives all the salient camera and distance data, along with the copyright information that is essential for tracking the financial and reproduction side of things - with good metadata nobody can claim ignorance, in an attempt to designate your image as an orphan.


Shutter Speed

This is crucial. Only experience will teach you the finer points of a new sport. There is more flexibility than ever before - changing ISO in line with changing weather, always having today's leeway at the higher end of the ratings, faster cameras than ever before, better autofocus and lastly, image stabilisation. The speeds of common subjects are tabled here, along with the calculated 'stop motion' shutter speeds (for subjects moving directly at you, half them for subjects moving across your line of fire).

These are good starting points. Camera shake is the biggest enemy, it smears a fog over the entire image; make sure at least something is sharp if you want people to think you meant it! The 1/focal length rule might apply to social photography but tends to fall down with long, heavy lenses, used in the wind, on unpredictable subjects. Skill levels among photographers vary- almost all like to claim better handholding than they can actually achieve - just as with pistol shooters, only the gifted few can achieve exceptional steadiness; those of us on betablockers have a head start!

Image stabilisation has helped enormously, but don't forget it only stops the photographer moving, not the subject. Autofocus helps but rarely works as well as the manufacturers would have us believe - the numbers on the vests of 10,000 metre runners are wonderful targets to focus on, the problem is they bounce up and down!


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1st Published 01/08/2011
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