The Basics Of Digital Photography Of Sports

While digital cameras do have “sports” or “action” settings to make taking photos of fast moving sports easy, simply using this setting is not enough to get the best results. In the digital photography of sport the user has a much larger l role to play than in other types of photography as the timing of the photos have to be perfect – and there is just a split second in which to take it.

When taking pictures of action moving around a playing field you have two options. The first way is to keep the camera ready and pointing at the part of the field where the action is taking place – this way you are always focused on the action and can take the photos when you need to. In the case of sports like basket ball and baseball where there are a few points where the action you want to record will occur, the option for you is to keep the camera focused on a particular point – the batter of the basket – and be ready to take the picture when the action happens.

No matter how fast your trigger finger is on the shutter button, there will always be a time lag between the button being pressed and the picture being taken as the camera will need to set itself to take the picture. This time lag is usually in fractions of a second but in fast moving sports, the delay could cause you to miss the crucial play you want to capture. You can solve this problem by keeping the shutter button pressed half way so that the camera is always in the auto focus mode and no time will be lost between the pressing of the button and the shutter action. You can also use the “Continuous” mode on the camera so it will take a rapid burst of photos as long as the button is being pressed. You will get a chain of pictures of the event and can then pick the best ones to keep.

A camera can only proceed to taking the next picture after the previous one has been stored in the memory card and a card with a slow write time will cause a long delay before you can take the next picture – it may be a fraction of a second, but in sports photography that could mean missing out on a great photo. Invest in a card with a high write speed to reduce the intervals and delays.