I'm new to sports photography - i live over in Wedding Photography forums here on FM...
but i'm now shooting sports photography for my old highschool. I've started with Soccer and Basketball and I wondered if any of you doing this with the Nikon D300 have any tips, trick and techniques that might be helpful.
I guess what I'm looking for mostly is settings on the D300 that seem to be more helpful than the ones i've found work best for wedding photography.
maybe AF modes, continuious focus ? anything like that..
love some feedback even if it's to scare me back over to wedding photography! HA.
hey Travis, here's what I use w/ my D300 (ambient light).
Picture Control:
D2X I
In-camera Sharpening=0
Saturation=+1
Contrast=0
Hue=-1
Brightness=0
High ISO NR=Low for 1250 & 1600, Normal if higher
AF-C
Single Pt AF
AF Lock On=Off
WB is the toughest, I find the D300 AutoWB works pretty well for consistent WB across the frame. I have also set a custom WB under the hoop, and in these shots, I tried a Kelvin setting eyeballing it from my LiveView screen. You can see the WB cycling issue in #4, the red on the background.
I shoot Manual, typically try for f2 & 1/500 and adjust ISO; in my daughter's home gym the lighting is pretty good I can usually shoot ISO 1250 or ISO 1600.
I use: 85f1.4 (tip-off & from deep in the corner for close-ups like pic #3 below)
50f1.4 AFS for baseline, about where the 3 pt line intersects
30f1.4 HSM for under the hoop (not used as much due to DOF)
aqualung.... or whatever your name is... (btw - is that a reference to the first original scuba equipment? are you a diver?)
I LOVE your basketball photos here.. I don't think I got anything near as good as this yet. great tips you've given here.. I'd like to dig a bit deeper into the settings on the D300 with you. I can tell you've worked hard to nail these..
I just did the firmware update (1.10 A and B) today before I went out and shot some more bball.
anyways.... do you have a website or somewhere I can view more of your work? this is fantastic...
appreciate you posting and sharing some techniques.
In addition, I suggest trying out some of the different AF tracking modes to see what suits your style. 21-point has found pretty popular support among my contacts, it gives you a little leeway when tracking your subject, and bounces around less (and is significantly less distracting) than 51-point 3D, which I've used twice for hockey in really terrible light (like 1/160th ƒ/2.8 iso 3200 was slightly underexposed kind of light) but otherwise I use 21-point exclusively.
Aqualung mentions the biggest problem in high school sports photos once you've got your camera settings down, the cycling fluorescent lights installed in every high school gym. You can see in his last example the arcs of light on the wall, one is green and one is pink. This is really typical light in gyms, so setting white balance is not only difficult, but accurate white balance will actually change under every single light in these gyms. These examples are also in one of the more well-lit gyms I've seen, and I've never shot in one that well lit (I do this every day for my job).
My camera is almost exclusively set to iso 1600 or 2000, don't be afraid to use these settings, they work pretty well on the D300 with very little correction, and I have the in-camera Noise Reduction set to off.
Here's a good example of what it looks like with a light stand set up. I would actually push it back further. I would actually go off the bleacher railing if I could. My stands are higher, @10ft... but sometimes it's nice to be able to move them. Just experiment.
