Manual Settings for Sports Photography

Sports Photography Settings on a Landscape Photographer’s Blog

The title sounds strange on a landscape photographer’s page.

Like any parent or grandparent with a camera, there are many sports photography opportunities with the kids/grandkids in sports.

Originally always used Aperture Priority

Ever since the kids were little, I always used Aperture Priority (AV) for the primary setting, with single focal point and evaluative metering.

These settings I used with my first digital camera, Canon Digital Rebel, and maintained them with the Canon 5D, 1DsMIII and now the 1DxMIII.

At the time, the grandkids were playing in the outdoor youth leagues. Conditions never changed much, and things generally worked well.

I started noticing shutter speed problems when the sports went inside, such as youth basketball. The gyms they were in were quite dark.

I never used shutter priority, as I always wanted to keep the shallow depth of field that aperture priority provided.

Manually Increased ISO

Darker gyms dictated increased ISO levels. By this time I was using the 1DsMIII - and still learning its limits.

Lenses were always f/2.8, shooting wide open again with aperture priority.

I never liked the outcome of using the higher ISO levels above 1000 (as I remember). Too much grain for my desire.

Processing in Lightroom often softened the faces.

Switched to f/2 or faster lenses

Still shooting with the 1DsMIII, I started using faster lenses. The first was the Canon 85mm f/1.4 L IS.

With little kids basketball, often we were sitting under the basket, or practically on the court on the sidelines, so being close was never an issue.

This worked well in low light gyms, typically shooting at f/2.0.

Switched to Canon 1DxMIII

As the older grandkids started playing high school sports, I took many more pictures under different conditions.

The basketball games and track meets were much faster. With the slower 5 FPS on the 1DsMIII, I was missing too many shots. Indoors, with low light, I still had the excessive (for me) grain issue.

I switched out to the Canon 1DxMIII, for a number of reasons, the first being speed (now 16 FPS with 99 shots before buffering issues). Shooting at much higher ISO levels provided great results, far better than I would have imagined.

To be fair, my 1DsMIII was close to 15 years old when I switched out to the 1DxMIII. That camera was still good for landscapes, really not a sports camera.

Clarity of the images was superb.

Manual with Auto ISO

Using the Custom Settings feature on the Canon 1DxMIII, I experimented with many different settings, primarily Aperture Priority though at times also Shutter Priority.

In situations where players went from sunlight to shade, or changing light inside, I still had the issue, especially when compensating for the darker conditions, in Av the shutter would slow down in darker situations, or in Tv the aperture would fluctuate to provide less depth of field than desired.

I have recently switched to shooting sports with manual settings for both shutter speed and aperture, leaving the ISO at auto to “self-adjust” given the lighting conditions.

It is my “go to” settings for all sports, and also music venues.

This is different from my landscape settings, where I also shoot manual, though set all three, shutter speed, aperture and ISO, single capture at a time, with 2 second delay on a tripod.

Manual Custom Setting for Sports

It’s my custom “C1” setting on my camera.

• Shutter speed: 1,000 second

• Aperture: f/2.8 (I only use f/2.8 lenses)

• ISO: Auto

• Single point metering on the subject’s eye, or face if distance

• Multi-shot sequencing

• Camera is hand-held

With this setting, the aperture is maintained for the desired shallow depth of field, the shutter speed is consistently maintained for capturing fast action, and the ISO is self-adjusted to the variable lighting conditions as the players pass from direct sunlight to shade, or darker corners of the gyms to brighter centers.

If you are struggling with the same issues I had using either Av or Tv,, you might enjoy the results using Manual for aperture and shutter, with auto ISO.

Good luck, and have fun!