Shooting...Sports Style

I have officially entered the land of "crazy". I keep longing for blog time, but it just isn't happening....and the sad part is, I can't foresee much in the future either. Spring is right around the corner and you know what that means. We had our first Varsity baseball game of the season Tuesday night and I must say...I absolutely love that feeling. It actually wasn't too cold, but I brought my little buddy heater just in case. I'm sure there are some cold nights upon us seeing as how there are 27 games on the schedule and that doesn't even include the weekend tournaments. Just say...I hope you won't give up on me.

With all that being said, I wanted to blog a little on sports photography. I have a couple of tidbits that I have discovered by trial and error, and I also have a question for you.

Little Ann just finished up her season of Center Court basketball. It is a league sponsored by a church in our area and they played at the church gymnasium on Saturday's. I had a little trouble taking pictures in there at first. The walls are light blue and the floors are a darker shade. I had issues getting the coloring right. Gym shooting has always been tough even at the school because of the fluorescent lighting (kind of like stage).

Through trial and error I discovered that if you will change to manual setting, and go to your white balance, you will find all kinds of neat different lighting options. I chose the one for fluorescent lighting and it made a world of difference. Sometimes, I still tweak the ones I take in that blue gym to a more natural look once I get home, but it sure does get you a clearer picture than if you just shot automatic. You have to admit this is pretty good for dark gym lighting.

The next thing I have always had issues with is the action. I can't tell you how many times I have thought about (and actually held in my hand) the big, BIG daddy sports lens. With both kids playing sports, I thought I must have that. The best thing of all was even though it was 2 grand, my sweet husband told me I could buy it. Something inside just kept telling me I just needed to keep playing with what I had. And I'm glad I did.

Action is important to me and I just couldn't stand to see my son a blur as he was running down the court. So one night as I watched him play basketball, I kept noticing that the lady that was taking pictures for the county paper had a camera just like mine. We talked for awhile and that is when I was introduced to the Tv setting. It stands for timed value. According to my manual: in the Tv mode you set the shutter speed and the camera automatically sets the aperture value to suit the subject's brightness. The faster the shutter speed, the better the camera can freeze a moving subject. BINGO. This was the best news to me. Check these out.

Although you can't see her face here, what I want you to notice is there is absolutely no blurring in this shot at all, and you can clearly see she is running down the court.

These next two shots are some for sure action and I was very pleased with the way they turned out. I will forever be grateful for the Tv setting!


Baseball can make for some great pictures as far as lighting is concerned, but if you are shooting automatic, I have found that you will still get quite a bit of blur when your subject is running or swinging a bat. The next greatest discovery I've made is the actual sports setting (it is the little man running on your dial). This actually is an automatic setting that will get you continuous shooting if you hold your snap button down. It will take pictures continually as your subject is in motion and they are not blurred. Great news, huh?

Where the problem comes in is when the sun goes down. I have found that you can't use the sports setting when there isn't any lighting. I usually just put my camera away after dark because I never can seem to get a good shot. This one turned out pretty well of Big Dan because I actually got out of my seat to shoot through the fence directly behind the batters box, used my flash...and it just so happened he was positioned right underneath field lighting. It helped that he was standing still or it wouldn't have been good.

I hope you find this somewhat interesting and if my trial and error can help you...well, then it was worth it!

So, that brings me to my question for you. All you Canon Rebel users....what on earth do you do to get good night shots?