[osv]

Motorsports has a very different velocity than foot-powered sports. I took 15 shots at 1/320, 64 at 1/160, and 120 in between. I got some blurred fingers at 1/160, but any other blurring you see is a result of objects being out of focus. The two attached photos were taken at 1/160 about 1 second apart. My camera lost focus in the second shot and a faster shutter speed wouldn't make the player's face or the ball significantly clearer in the first shot.

that's true, focusing issues overwhelm everything else.

it's a tough shooting situation, so we need to look at it in a positive light, and make it a win-win for everyone, i think that we can all learn from this.

wrt the shutter speed, if you look at that xlnt layup shot that brooke posted, you'll see that the legs appear to be in reasonable focus, but the hand with the ball is really blurry, due to the slow shutter speed.

we might be tempted to call that a creative choice, but it's not, because you can see that the guy's head is also somewhat blurry, due to the slow shutter... so even 1/320th is way too slow.

those last shots that you posted of the guy running with the ball would be good if the focus was good, but really, where does the biggest drama take place on the basketball court? right under the basket, of course.

we need some keepers, so that's where we concentrate... trap focusing a foot or two off of the rim would put you in the right area.

if the camera is pre-focused there, a very minor manual focus tweak would move the focus plane a foot or two, depending on where the players are approaching the basket.

yes, shooting basketball is a focus nightmare, but you should try shooting surfing with a manual lens >ack< there's little possibility of a trap focus situation there.

[PANGU_yien]

My apologies..

You're a good man, Steve.

[RGlasel]

if you look at that xlnt layup shot that brooke posted

If you are referring to Brooke's first shot, the player is dunking the ball, but you could be right,because in order to get extra jump to get above the basket, the player swings his arm as fast as he can, and with his reach the speed at the end of his arm might be enough to make it slightly blurry. On the other hand, the basket rim doesn't seem too sharp either and the aperture is f3.2 so maybe the depth of field doesn't extend to the end of his arm. The second shot is a layup and there the bottom of his right shoe and the grey edge of the backboard are fuzzy. If there was a similar shot at 1/500 and the same aperture, it would easier to nail down the minimum shutter speed. A typical tradeoff for higher shutter speeds is wider apertures, and then your creative choice is whether or not your depth of field is too shallow.

trap focusing a foot or two off of the rim would put you in the right area

If the teams are more closely matched than a semi-pro team and a recreational team of middle-aged policemen, you could go an entire game without seeing a player that open to the basket. Normally it won't be obvious that a guard is going to drive to the basket until it is too late to switch focus from the other shooting positions. The action in a basketball game is wherever the ball is, and every coach knows that his or her team needs to move the ball to a place where the other team isn't, so the action isn't very predictable. I really don't know what the optimum solution is, but the beauty of digital is that you never have to pay to develop out of focus pictures.

[MadMathMind]

Myth #2: You need a fast f2.8 telephoto to get a shallow enough depth of field to isolate a single player. Busted: The picture above is taken at f5.6. My camera managed to get the ball in focus, but not the player getting ready to receive the pass.

2.8 is more about getting a fast enough shutter speed than isolation. Long telephotos (300+) isolate at even f/6.3 or higher.

Myth #5: You need telephoto lenses with lots of reach if you want to get shots of action at other end of the court/field/pitch. Busted: With an APS-C camera, 135mm focal length is enough to go the full length of a basketball court. The DA 18-135 allows me to get the equivalent focal lengths of someone using a full frame camera and a 70-200mm zoom. I was standing on the floor, not up in the bleachers, but it's hard to convey action and movement in pictures taken from well above the game. Which is why getting field level access is so important.

If you're shooting high school sports, then sure, you don't need a big lens because you can stand on the court. For high school football, you can probably get permission to be on the field. But even then, look at what you see on the sidelines of an NFL game. They don't have 200mm lenses there. They have monstrous 500mm super fast lenses. A high school teacher of mine was an avid photographer; he had some massive lens too to shoot football.

If you want to shoot baseball or hockey, then you will need a big long lens. There's just no way to get close to the action of either of those.


The trick to shooting action is to shoot in burst mode. 1/250 can be fast enough to freeze action (especially in baseball) but the trick is burst mode. You hope to get one frame out of 5 where someone isn't moving.

[rbefly]

Hello Rick,
I've been following this thread, hoping someone could convince you of a pretty obvious fact regarding your photos;
All the shutter speeds are too slow. Way too slow.
It isn't the price of your gear (although you're way off on those figures, too), your focusing, framing or any other cause.
This attempt to prove that these type shots can be taken successfully with budget or kit lenses is 'busted', to use your phrase. No, they can't. That's exactly what your photos prove. 1/100s isn't even close to stopping any action, much less fast sports action. Neither is 1/200s.
It is very difficult to stop human motion (I mean FREEZE it, completely) when people are walking at a normal pace, at 1/125s.
At 1/180s, you might freeze the torso, if you pan with the shot. At 1/250s, the hands and feet become clearer, perhaps a slight blur. Bear in mind, this is walking, not running, twisting, passing the ball, jumping, etc. There, you're looking at 1/320s-1/400s.
All your shots, without exception, would be greatly improved by tripling the shutter speed. Try similar photos and see for yourself.
How or why you chose to prove the opposite is true, is beyond me.
So, yes, there are other techniques that could improve the results, but a too-slow SS is the primarly culprit and somehow, you don't see it.
A DA* 200mm f/2.8 or DA 50-135mm f/2.8 are around $1,200 USD. A Tamron or Sigma 80-200mm f/2.8 zoom, the basic 'entry' lens for sports, is $800-$1,200.
Not $15,000 or anywhere near it. A thousand bucks, give or take. Add a monopod, cable release and lots of practice and there you go.
But f/5.6, 1/125s at ISO 128,000 isn't the solution, either. F/2.8 at ISO 3,200 with a 1/500s sounds more like it.
The fastest lens in the world won't help, if your shutter speed is 1/60s-1/125s. They'll end up looking like the ones you've posted.
This claim/campaign you've set out to prove has backfired badly and most of the previous posters have agreed and tried to tell you so. Time to listen.
A lens that's (roughly) two full stops faster than your current gear (f/2.8 vs f/5.6) will allow faster SS's with the same ISO. Tripling a SS of 1/125s will result in a SS of 1/500s, which is in the ballpark for publishable or acceptable sports results. Slower SS's are not.
Timing, processing, framing, anticipation are all well and good, improvements to work on. But, all for naught, at 1/125s.
Artistically-blurred, human-motion studies aren't particularly welcome in sports photo venues. Save' em for your portfolio.
Sorry if this post is offensive to you, but that's my take on it.
Ron

If you are referring to Brooke's first shot, the player is dunking the ball, but you could be right,because in order to get extra jump to get above the basket, the player swings his arm as fast as he can, and with his reach the speed at the end of his arm might be enough to make it slightly blurry. On the other hand, the basket rim doesn't seem too sharp either and the aperture is f3.2 so maybe the depth of field doesn't extend to the end of his arm. The second shot is a layup and there the bottom of his right shoe and the grey edge of the backboard are fuzzy. If there was a similar shot at 1/500 and the same aperture, it would easier to nail down the minimum shutter speed. A typical tradeoff for higher shutter speeds is wider apertures, and then your creative choice is whether or not your depth of field is too shallow.If the teams are more closely matched than a semi-pro team and a recreational team of middle-aged policemen, you could go an entire game without seeing a player that open to the basket. Normally it won't be obvious that a guard is going to drive to the basket until it is too late to switch focus from the other shooting positions. The action in a basketball game is wherever the ball is, and every coach knows that his or her team needs to move the ball to a place where the other team isn't, so the action isn't very predictable. I really don't know what the optimum solution is, but the beauty of digital is that you never have to pay to develop out of focus pictures.

As I posted, it was my first time photographing a basketball game so what I didn't and don't know about that is a lot. If the sports section was missing from my newspaper, I'd never notice. My goal was to get some reasonable photos for a local online publication about a charity event. Normally, I post 1K Pixel ( long axis) JPEGS to a Dropbox folder, they choose a few, sometimes cropping, and publish. These are seen on laptops, PC's, tablets and phones so color rendition and clarity is widely variable. The public gallery is here Cary Invasion vs Police . What I wanted to accomplish was to tell the story, let the viewer feel they were there. It was mostly about community, including the half time by the YMCA "Super Skippers". My camera settings were educated guesstimates. Photo journalism is necessarily a generalized approach. Cover the event, no matter what it is.

If I was a sports photographer, it would be like my ballet work, a combination of learning experience and the appropriate gear. I've spent over 3 years photographing dance at a local ballet conservatory and after 150K+ images. I'm still learning. I've watched lots of rehearsals and brushed up on my French so I understood the teachers aka coaches. Before productions, I get familiar with the music, choreography and costumes at studio rehearsal. Space and Tech rehearsal is where I get the rhythm and candids. I learn about set and lighting cues at dress rehearsal. I know the dancers, have been watching them grow up. I know who can do what, I can anticipate moves. Visiting male dancers are more explosive and quicker than females so I boost my shutter speed and consequently, ISO. I know the differences between lighting people at local venues. Almost always, I have it all down cold by the last performance. And I review and self critique after every session. Back of the camera display is wonderful but until you get it up on a large monitor, you really can't see it. That's where the learning occurs for next time.

Amateur or pro, caring about what you're photographing is the most important thing because that will make you want to do it the best you can. You won't mind all the effort to learn and understand. You'lI find the money for the tools you need.

[RGlasel]

this is walking, not running, twisting, passing the ball, jumping, etc. There, you're looking at 1/320s-1/400s.

The first picture I posted was shot at 1/160, somehow the ball managed to be suspended in mid-air while I took that shot. I posted another shot where an updraft is holding up the basket netting. If you read my posts carefully, I took several pictures at shutter speeds from 1/160 to 1/320 and I did notice some motion blur on fingers at 1/160 but no benefit from 1/320 compared to 1/200 or 1/250. If you look at the pictures from the other poster, which were shot at 1/320, you can find plenty of moving balls and body parts with zero blurring. What you will also find in those pictures are blurry balls and body parts attached to clearly defined body parts. Logically, is this a problem caused by slow shutter speed or out of focus?

f/5.6, 1/125s at ISO 128,000 isn't the solution, either. F/2.8 at ISO 3,200 with a 1/500s sounds more like it.

I posted a shot at 1/160 and ISO 12,800 for an example of an extreme exposure where high ISO noise wasn't the problem it is constantly being portrayed as. To get 1/500 with those lighting conditions, even with ISO 12,800, requires an f1.8 lens. To shoot at ISO 3200 would require an f0.5 lens! Isn't that a mythical lens?

A DA* 200mm f/2.8 or DA 50-135mm f/2.8

If the problem is focus, not shutter speed, I don't see how either of these lenses will be better than the 18-135 DC. In the five months I've been a member of this forum, I don't recall anyone bragging about how fast AF is on SDM lenses. In fact, in the recent review of the screw-drive DA 55-300, it blew the doors off of the DA* 60-250 in focus speed tests. Using a prime lens for shooting a sport with moving players? Zooming with your feet would be funny to watch, if it wasn't impossible to do. Upgrading to a K-3 would probably give me the best bang for my buck, with its AF improvements. There was a thread from about a month ago linking to an article from a professional photographer who shot a college football game, and the price tag for his gear was $16,500, so for illustrative purposes I used a similar figure. My point is that quality of equipment (discounting AF performance) has no bearing on the quality of sports photographs.

This claim/campaign you've set out to prove has backfired badly and most of the previous posters have agreed and tried to tell you so. Time to listen.

All I ask is for someone to do some tests like I did and disprove my claims. Instead, I get a half dozen examples of poor reading comprehension. In the past I've asked for help with flash photography and received excellent advice that I've been able to implement; for my own interest, I experimented with sports photography, discovered some of the advice I'd seen wasn't accurate, and posted my conclusions.

---------- Post added 02-09-14 at 03:07 PM ----------

like my ballet work

Yes, very much! Stunning.

[osv]

Amateur or pro, caring about what you're photographing is the most important thing because that will make you want to do it the best you can. You won't mind all the effort to learn and understand. You'lI find the money for the tools you need.

great post brooke.

since you are into ballet, you may remember this... back in 1985, i happened to read the text of an interview of martha graham, in the l.a. times... it was a truncated version of an a.p. wire story, but for some reason i tore the page out, and kept it all these years... you can now google the entire interview, it's amazing what's online:

"...Miss Graham said her vision of human movement with its capacity for grace and passion, love and violence, was a reaction against ballet as it was taught in the United States in the early 1900s when she first donned toe shoes.

''It (ballet) was decadent. I had to give up everything I knew, everything that was beautiful for me and find the truth,'' she said.

''I remember looking in a microscope when I was 4 years old. My father was a physician and he showed me a slab of water. He asked me what it looked like and I said, 'It's pretty water, but it has wriggles in it.'
''He said 'yes, it's contaminated. We must look for the truth.' And I feel that was one of my first dancing lessons,'' she said."

i wonder if, when we try to figure out what's wrong with photos, and how they can be improved, it's really just another search for the truth.

great post brooke.

since you are into ballet, you may remember this... back in 1985, i happened to read the text of an interview of martha graham, in the l.a. times... it was a truncated version of an a.p. wire story, but for some reason i tore the page out, and kept it all these years... you can now google the entire interview, it's amazing what's online:

"...Miss Graham said her vision of human movement with its capacity for grace and passion, love and violence, was a reaction against ballet as it was taught in the United States in the early 1900s when she first donned toe shoes.

''It (ballet) was decadent. I had to give up everything I knew, everything that was beautiful for me and find the truth,'' she said.

''I remember looking in a microscope when I was 4 years old. My father was a physician and he showed me a slab of water. He asked me what it looked like and I said, 'It's pretty water, but it has wriggles in it.'
''He said 'yes, it's contaminated. We must look for the truth.' And I feel that was one of my first dancing lessons,'' she said."

i wonder if, when we try to figure out what's wrong with photos, and how they can be improved, it's really just another search for the truth.

Discovery, as Ms Graham experienced, is irreversible. My aim is to show what is unseen, discovery.

[HockeyDad]

Myth #1: The only difference between professional sports photographers and myself is $15,000 worth of equipment. Busted:

Totally agree! The BIGGEST difference between myself and a Pro sports photog is their experience and skills. They will achieve better results than me in every case if we are both shooting the same gear. However, when you combine their superior skills AND superior gear, the end result is what's worth paying money for... That pricier gear isn't just about yielding a single better photo... it's about being able to get the shot they want, regardless of circumstance and have all of those shots be worthy of publishing as opposed to 10 lucky shots out of 100 that "came out ok".

Myth #2: You need a fast f2.8 telephoto to get a shallow enough depth of field to isolate a single player. Busted:

I don't think that's the myth. I think the myth would be that you need fast glass to allow for lower ISO and faster shutter. "NEED" implies that it would be impossible to achieve a decent result without fast glass. I began my quest for sub-$1000 hockey photos of my kids a few years ago with a K-r kit and got some ok pics. However, I rented fast glass for a week and while my skills had not magically improved, I was able to achieve much better results and more consistently. So I'd say, before you call that myth "busted", rent or borrow a Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 and give it a whirl... don't knock it 'til you've tried it. Believe me, I REALLY wanted to prove I could shoot hockey without doubling my budget. There's even a thread around here somewhere of my initial attempts.

Myth #3: You need at least 1/500 of a second to avoid motion blur. Busted:

To "avoid" it, no. You can shoot bursts and get lucky enough to catch things just as the motion is in transition. Like your basketball net or ball... those things appear frozen because they were. The net was likely just in transition between upward and downward movement and the ball had decelerated or was at the peak of an arc just slow enough for the slower shutter speed to freeze it. When I had only my K-r and 55-300 I was careful to stay under 200mm so that the aperture was f/4 and shutter was 250 or 320... shooting a burst usually gave me one decent shot where, just like your shots, the important parts were sharp enough to capture the moment for myself and the other parents. However, NEVER was the whole player and puck (and snow coming off the skate) frozen in a way that you'd see a pro's photos. Also, there's panning. I still have a lot of fun panning hockey players. Takes patience and a TON of luck but the shots can be neat at shutter speeds as slow as 1/100. So, if you use the term "avoid" I guess the myth can be busted, but if you want consistently sharp photos of athletes in motion, 1/500 is the MINIMUM shutter speed you should be thinking about.

Myth #4: You will have too much noise if you go higher than ISO 1600 with an crop sensor camera. Busted:

That one's common knowledge... even the pros shoot higher ISO than 1600 when necessary. Modern bodies do a great job and software is wonderful nowadays. I've read articles showcasing magazine cover photos shot higher than ISO 1600. Gotta do what you gotta do to get the shot.

Myth #5: You need telephoto lenses with lots of reach if you want to get shots of action at other end of the court/field/pitch. Busted:

Depends what you want I suppose. I've shot hockey with a 50mm and cropped the snot out of the pics. You get the action, yes. What you don't get is beads of sweat on the face of the athlete, snow coming off the skate of a hockey player, the fine details of the wrinkled expression on their faces, etc... Those fine details are what makes the difference between a "professional" photo (one that someone would pay money for) and what could be called a high quality snapshot that families will cherish and even make team photo books from.

I guess it all depends on what you're after. I don't have $15k worth of gear, just a K-30 with a Sigma 70-200/2.8. I'm not very skilled... only been shooting hockey for 3 seasons and those darn kids just keep getting faster as they get older which keeps cancelling out any improvements in my skills. However, the other parents on my kids' teams LOVE my photos and they make fatheads and yearbooks and Christmas cards and whatever else out of them. Looking through them though, there's not a single one that would be worthy of a sports magazine.

[nomadkng]

there's a technique with high end zoom lenses and burst mode, where you stay at roughly half the zoom to track action, and keep focus lock. as the action gets "more dramatic" you zoom during burst shooting. some photos are worthless because you get that "transistion" effect, but you eventually learn to zoom at a certain pace that if you can track well enough, you keep focus AND get the close up.

I use this for motorsports, (1/1500 sec) and air shows (1/2500 sec). panning is a another technique, and I've managed to shoot some aerial shots as low as 1/320 sec

at 300mm I need 1/500th minimum for statics, closer to 1/1000 for any moving object (people or animals).

I have a 100-300 f4 and 80-200 f2.8. I'd give a body part for a 300 f 2.8, and those are 3k minimum. the 500 f4.5 I would sacrifice several body parts for is 5k.
also, most pro shooters have a 200 or 300mm prime and a middle zoom like a 24-105ish, both at f2.8. I can't think of many times where I haven't seen a pro with a two lens, two body set-up.
heck, read the PF post about the getty shooters and there 6! body/lens set up.

SOOOO, YES! you do need to spend more than 500 on a set up to get those pro shots AND you need very good technique(s).

That's one of the most frustrating things for me about pentax, their focus inaccuracy and their sdm lenses are slower than a slug. I HAVE to use sigma and tokina as my action lenses. I can't imagine handicapping myself with the 18-135 or any SDM lens. I tried the 50-135 for almost a year, but it was worthless for sports/anything moving faster than a corpse at a wake.

[mikeSF]

i don't want to dogpile on the OP, but nothing in your examples convinced me that you are able to transcend your equipment limitations.

[PPPPPP42]

Maybe this was mentioned above since I stopped reading, but for sports shots on the same level as you (across the court or field) with nothing in between you could manually front focus with a greater depth of field so you get all of the action but none of the background, juggling a thin depth of field is too difficult most of the time and those cluttered backgrounds really make it hard to focus on the players.
Subject isolation is critical in many sports shots for the 3D effect.
I think sports are a place for top notch fast and precisely targeted AF or none at all.
With old manual lenses with depth of field scales it was almost easier because if you knew the distance to various points on the court or field (not hard since they are a standard size) you knew exactly what you were going to get in focus ahead of time.