I would estimate that well over half the people I know that own a DSLR bought the camera with primary intention of photographing their children playing sports. I would also estimate well over half those same people could have purchased a point and shoot camera and obtained the same results.
Its not because the camera is not capable of shooting better pictures, its just a matter of trying to understand how to use the camera and take advantage of its strengths.
The first thing is to get out of automatic mode (the green setting on your camera). Being in automatic mode makes the camera guess all of the settings. While today's camera's do a very good job of guessing, they still get it wrong. Leaving your DSLR in automatic mode essentially gives you a very expensive and heavy point and shoot camera.
Which camera mode to use will be discussed in a separate article.
The second mistake people make is choosing which focus area mode to choose. By default cameras come shipped with auto focus points mode selected. Again, in this mode camera do a decent job of guessing what you want to focus on, it gets it wrong way to often.
With my Canon 7D with auto focus points mode selected the camera has 19 auto focus points to choose from. The camera guessing which one of those points is the most important and focuses on it. Usually the camera picks the subject closest to the camera. But what happens when that is not the person or object you want to focus on?
When I first started this focus mode gave me fits. I would be set up anticipating a play at home plate, everything would be great the players would be barreling home from third with a perfect throw to the catcher and I would be so excited I was about to get a perfect shot. The the home plate umpire would step into the side of the frame and the camera would lock focus on the umpire leaving the player out of focus.
The reason the camera would do this is auto focus will selected the object closest to the camera to focus on.
Especially for sports, but in reality for most any kind of photography you want to use spot or single point focus. That way you can pick exactly what you want to focus on.
I often find myself shooting in AF point expansion these days. I love spot focusing, but for sports sometimes it is difficult to track erratically moving subjects with a single point. Expansion gives you 5 points to track with, that's gives you a little bit of room for error in your tracking.
By default in my Canon 7D this mode is not active when the camera comes from the factory. You have to enable it in the custom menu settings. A simple Google search will tell you how to activate this mode.
The other setting you will want to change in your camera is the focus mode. By default your camera is shipped in Single Shot mode. This mode is meant to take pictures of non moving subjects or objects. For sports photography you want to have your camera set to AI Servo mode (continuous for Nikon). What this does is it allows the camera to anticipate the movement of the subject and continually auto focus as the subject moves in the frame.
To get the most consist sharp pictures in this mode it is best to anticipate the action and pre-focus on the player you want to photograph before the action you want to capture takes place. Then follow that player until you are ready to shoot. The camera will do a great job of keeping that player in focus until the action occurs. If you wait until just before the action takes place, you have to find that person in the frame and then the camera has to focus in on the action. This delay can cause you to get an out of focus shot or cause you to miss the shot all together.
If you are using a professional series lens this is less of an issue. The reason is these lenses are fast focusing. But with a kit lens it has to search through the zoom range to find focus. But if you pre-focus on your subject before the action takes place, the camera will just track them in servo mode instead of having to hunt for focus.
The last thing for sharper photos is to stop down your lens. We all want to shoot our camera's at the maximum aperture possible. Unfortunately the lowest f/stop number on the camera is usually not the sharpest. So if you have an f/2.8 lens, set it to f/4. This is usually produces sharper images and also give you a little bit more depth of field to work with if your focus point is not dead on.
When i first started I would often find players faces were slightly out of focus. This is because I shot at f/2.8 and I had a very shallow depth of field. For example I would find when I shot, the camera would grab focus on the bat or a players hands as they swung. The shallow depth of field meant the face would end up with a soft focus in the image.
With these easy tips you will be surprised how much better your sports photos will turn out.
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