Digital Camera Master

Everybody’s seen those incredible high-speed action photos of athletes frozen in mid-leap. Without these shots (and the swimsuit photos), Sports Illustrated would be no thicker than a pamphlet. Through a combination of careful positioning, focusing, lighting, and shutter-speed adjustments, you can take the very same stop action shots. Even if you never take sports photos, knowing how to freeze action lets you capture water splashes, birds in flight, and fleeting childhood moments.

While some of the techniques you’ll read about in this section work with any camera, for best results, try to get your hands on a camera that has:

• A telephoto or zoom lens. Action shots look more dramatic when your moving subject fills the frame.
• Manual or shutter-priority mode. To freeze movement without blur, your camera has to grab the shot in a fraction of a second. Both these shooting modes help that happen.
• Prefocus. A great shot can pass right by while your camera focuses. Many digital cameras let you focus in advance by pressing the shutter button halfway before you’re ready to shoot. (Check the manual to see if your camera has this feature.)
• Burst mode. If your camera lets you fire off a few pictures in rapid succession, chances are greater that you’ll get the shot with one of them.
• Spot metering. While not critical, this feature helps ensure that your focus of interest (not the background) is properly lit, and not obscured by a shadow or the sun’s glare.

You don’t need all these features for sports pictures, and you won’t use each of them in every shot. But knowing how these tools work and when to summon them helps expand your shooting repertoire.

1. Getting Close to the Action
If your digital camera has a zoom lens, it’s probably a 3X zoom, meaning that it can magnify the scene three times. Unfortunately, if you’re in the stands at the football game hoping for action shots of an individual player, 3X isn’t powerful enough. What you really need is one of those enormous, bazooka-like telephoto lenses that protrude three feet in front of the camera to get a good action shot like the one in Figure 1.

If you have a 3X zoom, it doesn’t mean you can’t capture good shots. Find a position on the sidelines that puts you as close to the action as possible. Zoom in with your camera and then use the trick shown in the first figure.

If it’s a bright, sunny day, the standard “automatic everything” setting of the camera may work just fine. Take a few sample shots, trying to get the action as it’s moving. If the action is passing in front of you, pan with it. This way, you’ll do a better job of freezing the subject. The background may be blurred, but this actually adds to the impression of motion.

Figure 1. If action photography is a regular part of your shooting, consider a digital camera with an 8X zoom or greater. Better yet, look into a digital SLR (single-lens reflex) camera, which can accommodate a telephoto lens. A digital SLR outfitted with a 200mm lens captured this moment in sports.

Figure 2. Top: You may not be able to afford a digital SLR with a $10,000 super-telephoto lens attachment. But if you have a 4-megapixel camera or an even better one, here’s a way to zoom in on the action. Shoot at your camera’s highest resolutionzoomed in as much as you can.

Bottom: Once the picture is in your image editing program, you can zoom in even more by cropping the portion of the picture you want to keep. Thanks to the high resolution of the original photo, you’ll still have enough pixels to make a nice print.

2. Using a Fast Shutter
Many folks give up taking pictures of sports for one reasonblur. A really fast-moving subject can change position while the camera’s taking the picture, resulting in a blurry, ruined image. With disposable and credit card digicams, you’re stuck with the blur. But if your camera lets you adjust a few settings, you’ll take better action shots.

For freezing action, put your camera in shutter-priority mode. In this mode, you tell the camera that the speed of the shot is what matters. For example, you can specify that the exposure lasts for only 1/500th of a second. As long as your subject doesn’t move within that tiny window of time, it remains in focus.

Understanding what this mode does is slightly technical, but extremely important. Whenever you take a picture, the amount of light that enters the camera is determined by two things: the speed of the shutter opening and closing, and the size of the opening of the diaphragm in the lens (the aperture).

When the shutter opens and closes very quickly (which is what you want for sports photography), it admits less light into the camera. To prevent the picture from being too dark, the camera has to compensate by increasing the size of its aperture, letting more light through during that fraction of a second.

In shutter-priority mode, that’s exactly what happens. You’re saying, “I don’t care about the aperture. You worry about that, little camera buddy. I just want you to snap the picture fast.” The camera nods in its little digital way and opens its aperture wide enough to compensate for your fast shutter speed. Of course, you can also set your own shutter speed, along with the aperture setting, in fully manual mode, if your camera has it. The beauty of shutter priority is that it’s faster, since you have only one setting to deal withthe shutter.

The way you turn on shutter-priority mode differs greatly by camera. On some cameras, you have to fiddle around with the menu system. On others, you simply turn the little control knob on the top to a position marked S or Tv (old-time photography lingo for time value), as shown in Figure 3.

Once you’re in shutter-priority mode, you need to indicate how fast you want the shutter to snap by adjusting the dial or slider on your camera. You can start with 1/1000th of a second and take a series of shots. (Instead of the fraction, the screen may display just 1000.) If the result is too dark, the camera is opening the aperture as wide as it can, so you have to slow down the shutter speed to the next notch500, in this case.

3. Saving Time by Focusing in Advance
When you try to photograph a fast-moving target, you may run headfirst into a chronic problem of digital camerasshutter lag. That’s the time the camera takes to calculate the focus and exposure from the instant you squeeze the shutter button to the instant the shutter actually snaps, usually about one second.

Figure 3. To freeze the action, use a fast shutter speed, like 1/1000th of a second. Find your camera’s shutter-priority mode, which is usually designated by an S on the mode dial. But some cameras, like Canons, use the more traditional abbreviation Tv, which stands for time value. Either way, you set the shutter speed, and the camera adjusts the aperture automatically to admit the right amount of light.

Unfortunately, even a delay of one second means death to perfect sports photography. You’ll miss the critical instant every time.

The circuitry in more expensive cameras like Nikon and Canon digital SLRs is fast enough to make shutter lag a non-issue. If you’re not blessed with such a rig, you can often overcome shutter lag by using your camera’s prefocus feature. If your camera has it, half-pressing the shutter makes the camera calculate the exposure and focus in advance. Since those calculations are responsible for most shutter lag, prefocus nearly eliminates the lag, freezing the action closer to the critical moment. Try pressing your camera’s shutter halfway down. When the focus is locked in, the camera usually indicates it with a flashing light or a little beep.

Suppose you’re trying to get a shot of the goalie in a soccer game. Take advantage of the time when he’s just standing there doing nothing. Frame the shot on your camera screen. Then, as the opposing team comes barreling down the field toward him, press the shutter button just halfway. Keep the button half-pressed until the moment of truth, when the goalie dives for the ball. Now squeeze the shutter the rest of the way.

When you use features like prefocus or burst mode (described next), anticipating the critical moment pays big dividends in sports photography. With a little practice, you can learn to press the shutter button just before the big moment, rewarding you with the perfect shot.

4. Increasing Your Odds with Multiple Shots
Most recent digital camera models have a burst mode, which snaps a series of shots in rapid succession as you hold down the shutter button. Burst mode is like an old film camera’s motor drive, making rapid-fire buzz-CLICK buzz-CLICK noises. You may remember hearing it in movies where the main character is a photographer. (Fortunately, digital cameras are a lot quieter.)

When you use burst mode, most cameras capture only about two frames per second, but that’s enough to improve the odds that you’ll get one good shot. With a little practice, burst mode helps you compensate for shutter lag, especially if you anticipate the action. Strive to start the burst before the batter starts to swing or the skater takes off for a jump. By the time the action comes to a climax, the camera is firing at full-speed, too.

5. Putting the Spotlight on Your Subject
Ordinarily, a digital camera calculates the amount of light in a scene by evaluating light from all areas of the frame. And usually, that system works perfectly well. In sports photography, however, the surrounding scene is usually substantially brighter or darker than the athletes, leading to improper exposure of the one thing you really wantthe action.

Fortunately, many digital cameras offer spot metering, so you can make sure the subject is correctly lit, background notwithstanding. In spot-metering mode, you see little bracket markers (or a square or circle) in the center of your viewing frame (Figure 4). Whatever you place within these brackets (the star quarterback, your daughter atop her horse, or the finish line, for example) is what the camera pays attention to when calculating the exposure. By turning on spot metering for sports shooting, you’ll make sure that the athlete is correctly lit.

Figure 4. In this picture, the athletes are brighter than the baseball field. With most cameras’ standard autoexposure mode, which evaluates the lighting in all areas of the scene and tries to strike a balance, the players would likely be too bright (overexposed). Using spot metering, you can tell your camera to set the exposure for the smaller area in the center of the frame, where the subjects of the photo are.