Kyra

I haven’t shot sports before, but I know where you can go for help. Go to dpreview.com and locate the tab for the forums. You can try the beginner’s forum and you might get some help there. But the best option is to go to the brand/model forum for your camera. If you have a Nikon D90, you would go to the Nikon forum for the D40-D90 cameras. Or if you have a Canon Rebel, you would go to the forum for the Rebels. And some just have the SLR Talk forum rather than breaking the models up into smaller groups. Find your forum and start a thread asking for advice on shooting sports events.

Tell them everything you can think of that might help them help you. Like what camera you have, what lenses you have, what other accessories like a flash or tripod. The people there are generally very friendly and helpful. Join the forums and be a part of the community. Then post some pics later of your results. They’ll love it.

Issac

It’s a difficult question to answer because we don’t know much about your equipment, but I will give you some pointers.

1. Shoot during the daytime, especially in the beginning. With many lenses that are not fast enough (especially at the telephoto end), you want to have the most amount of light possible. This will allow you to stop your action better for a clearer shot.

2. Shoot at a medium ISO speed setting. ISO 400 Rating is a good number for most occasions both indoors and outdoors. However, when shot during the daytime under ISO 400, you can easily achieve very fast shutter speeds with more inexpensive lenses.

3. Shoot to freeze action first. What I mean by that is, do not try to shoot panning shots… yet. It is a whole lot easier to have faster shutter speeds and just freeze the action than to try and pan the camera for a panning shot.

4. Use either manual focus or AI Servo with selective focus. AI Servo (on Canon models) will continually refocus your camera to keep the subject focused as long as it remains on the selected focus point AND your finger is halfway on the shutter. You can use manual focus and prefocus at a certain distance waiting for the subject to pass by. One way or another, you will have much faster response from the camera due to the lack of time during cameras autofocus.

5. Buy better equipment. Sports photographers will use anything from a 70-200mm f/2.8 to 600 or 800mm f/5.6 lenses. Now, the 800mm lens does cost over $10k so don’t go buying that one for fun (Also it’s as big as your torso, but that’s not the point). The point is, with better equipment, it will get easier to freeze motion. Compare a $150 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at 200mm to a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm. You will automatically gain two full f-stops of light AND you have a bigger frontal element (glass) to simply, capture more light. Money can’t buy you everything, but it CAN buy you something.

6. And lastly, use a tripod or a monopod, even during the day. It will just make your life so much easier not having to hold the camera all the time.

There are so many other things that I can say on here, but it’s late at night and I’m getting tired. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions

Mayer