1st time Shooting HS Football

[Dramatapix®]

First time shooting a High School Football game... would love C&C.

Thanks:

The rest can be found at:

http://brettmallard.smugmug.com/gallery/1897410

http://brettmallard.smugmug.com/photos/95685063-L.jpg

http://brettmallard.smugmug.com/photos/95685086-L.jpg

[Rene`]

What is your equipment?

[Dramatapix®]

What is your equipment?

This was shot with Nikon D50 and Sigma 70-200mm f2.8

[donek]

The second one is my pick. The guy in the air and you can see the runners face. Just shot my first game today too. They're at:
http://www.donek.smugmug.com/gallery/1898838

[cecilc]

... would love C&C.

Nice shots ...

I checked out the exif info on your shots. Allow me to recommend just a couple of things:

There's no indication of what ISO you were shooting at, but I'd shoot at the lowest ISO I could and still maintain a good, fast shutter speed (and it looks like you could've gotten away with 100 or 200 in that light).

I noticed that you were shooting in shutter priority. Which is fine if you MUST have a certain shutter speed .... but in shooting sports, you really don't have to have a certain shutter speed, just a fast enough shutter speed (at least, in that lighting situation). So for sports, I'd recommend shooting in aperture priority and set your aperture at 2.8-4.0 and see what shutter speeds that gives you. Chances are that in that light your shutter speeds would be just fine.

The object here is to isolate your subject from the background so that your shot looks less "cluttered" with stuff ..... which means a shallow depth of field, which means using more of a wide-open shutter. In a few of your shots, your aperture was 5.6 ... and that depth of field is going to make a lot of your photo look "in focus", even the background which you don't want in focus. Another reason for aperture priority shooting - with a wider aperture, you'll have less depth of field and some of that background will drop out ....

One other item: try to shoot from a lower perspective. Either kneeling or sitting down altogether.

Best of luck ....

[johng]

I agree with Cecil - shoot Av and 2.8. Otherwise backgrounds are way too distracting.

I'm also going to suggest you frame tighter to the action.

Take the first shot: the players jogging up don't add anything to the image - the story is the tackle. So you want to frame tight on that.

In the second shot, the best story is the runner and the guy flying in for a tackle - so frame tighter around that. If there was no flying defender than you would crop down on the runner and the defender on the left.

I think if you open up the aperture, and frame tighter you'll see a big improvement.

Keep at it and keep posting!!!

[stephiewilliams]

Your timing is exceptionally good for it being your first time shooting the sport. I would agree with the other on Aperture Priority mode and downing the ISO if you can. Also if you feel like shooting tighter might mean missing something don't forget you can also crop to be tight...

[johng]

Also if you feel like shooting tighter might mean missing something don't forget you can also crop to be tight...

Absolutely true, to a point. You still want to frame as tight in-camera as you are comfortable with. You'll get 2 important benefits:

1. Better subject isolation - the longer focal length you use the better the isolation will be (assuming all other factors - aperture, distance to subject and distance from subject to background are the same).

and

2. The more of your subject you have covering your focus point the more accurate your focus will be.

So, yes, you can absolutely crop down but having your subject fill 2/3 of the frame to start with is going to produce much sharper results than filling 1/4 of the frame and cropping down all the time.

A pro on another forum put it best: frame tight, crop even tighter.

[Dramatapix®]

Wow... this is all Awesome information and exactly the type of feedback I've been hoping for on this forum. Thank you all very much for your insight and for sharing your knowledge. I'll post some more images once I've put to practice your suggestions.

Brett

[mercphoto]

Cecil makes very good points about aperture priority, about too much depth of field in your shots, and about your timing being good. I'd like to recommend you consider shooting in portrait orientation rather than landscape orientation. People are mostly vertical creatures, not horizontal creatures. Thus put the camera in that orientation. Your first shot, in particular, really begs for a vertical crop of the action.