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Tennis photos

  • swingking
    Member
    Ballyman
    Participant

    Howdy
    The first one is nice action shot. It seems to suffer a little from motion blur so I’d try and use a higher shutter speed if you can next time. Also, in sports photography, the general rule is to crop tight so you can highlight the action. There are loads of exceptoins to this of course but I don’t think this is one!

    The second one is severly underexposed or else a silhouette gone wrong. :)

    kensutz
    Participant

    Both are soft. Second is way underexposed.

    swingking
    Member

    thanks for the advice. It’s much appreciated.

    I don’t have the fastest sports lens ; 55-250 f4-5.6 which is not going to be ideal .

    I’d love to own a 70-200 F2.8 IS but can’t quite afford one. :D

    swingking
    Member

    just checked the EXIF on my first shot. Very surprised there’s motion blur.

    Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
    Aperture: f/5.0
    Focal Length: 100 mm

    2nd shot

    Exposure: 1/4000 sec
    Aperture: f/4.5
    Focal Length: 84 mm

    Ballyman
    Participant

    It may not be motion blur. It may just be slightly out of focus. I presumed it was motion blur as the subject was moving.

    What were you trying to achieve with the second shot? Was it just underexposed or were you trying a silhouette?

    swingking
    Member

    I was actually trying to achieve a silhouette but it didn’t quite work out the way I wanted.

    Just as a matter of interest, is Servo focus mode always used in sports photos?

    Ballyman
    Participant

    Pretty much.

    In sport you need to focus on a moving subject so AI servo is the way to go.
    Sometimes you would use One Shot, for example if you were shooting Show Jumping then you could pre-focus on the fence and fire the shutter as the horse clears the fence. There are other occasions also where you would use One Shot but I would imagine in 99% of cases it would be AI servo.

    Personally, I use AI servo regardless of what I was shooting unless I was 100% certain that the subject isn’t moving, such as a landscape.

    For a Silhouette to work, you need much brighter light in the background than the subject. In your example, the light in the background isn’t much brighter than the subject and there is also a hedge in the way. You really need the background to be a few stops brighter and have no dark objects, like the hedge, in the background.

    swingking
    Member

    that’s great advice.

    One more question. My camera is a 20D and it has 9 AF points. I tend to just use the centre point for focusing.

    Would it be useful to use Auto AF point selector for sports?

    Sorry for the questions but I’m not very good at shooting sports and I would love to get better.

    Ballyman
    Participant

    For sport I use:
    Centre Point Focusing
    High ISO
    High Shutter
    Low Aperture
    AI Servo
    High FPS
    Large Jpeg
    Either Manual Exposure or Tv with spot metering. 99% of the time it would be Manual only.

    breandain
    Participant

    I would definitely try to get a hold of a 70-200mm f2.8 if I were you! You might get one on one of the 2nd hand sites easy enough. I know having the IS is a nice touch but if you are using High Shutter speeds and are relatively steady handed (or using a monopod) you should be able to achieve nice results. The difference between the f2.8 and dealing with f4-5.6 is quite big and you wont regret spending for it!!

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