1. Shutter Speed

If you’re a total noob at photography, no worries! Let’s start with shutter speed. The shutter speed on your camera is how fast the shutter closes capturing the image. A faster shutter speed will result in less image blur, but less light will be let into the camera so the photos may appear darker. A slower shutter speed will let in more light but will result in blurry photos (depending on your subject). The shutter speed I recommend for shooting anything sports is 1/1000. I try to refrain from shooting any lower than this number as images may start to blur at speeds under that. 

2. Aperture

The next setting you need to be aware of is aperture. The aperture of your camera is what allows for the light to come into your camera. The larger the opening, the more light you let in. The smaller the opening, the less light you let in. There are a few things to keep in mind here for aperture that may be confusing: the bigger the aperture, the more shallow depth of field you’ll have. This refers to how much of the picture is in focus and photos with a larger aperture tend to have blurred backgrounds (which personally I really enjoy in my photographs). The smaller the aperture, the less shallow depth of field, which means more will be in focus. 

*Please note the aperture numbers on your camera: smaller number means bigger aperture, and larger number means smaller aperture. This can be confusing!

Now, what aperture settings do I recommend for shooting sports? Wide open. What does that mean? “Wide open” refers to shooting with the aperture as open and large as it can possibly be (or the smallest number possible on your camera). I always shoot wide open on my camera as it allows for the most light to enter the camera as possible, and for shooting at such a high shutter speed, you’ll need it. My camera lens has a maximum aperture of f. 2.8, but most standard lenses that come with the camera may be in the f. 3.5 maximum aperture range. Aperture is a huge beast by itself, and I will cover it more extensively in a future post.

3. ISO

ISO in basic terms is your camera’s sensitivity to light. A smaller ISO is less sensitive, and a higher ISO is more sensitive. This step can get really confusing, but a key thing to remember is the higher the ISO, the more image noise/grain your photos will have. Noise and grain are the number of visible pixels in your photos. The higher your ISO, the more noisy and grainy your photos will be. After adjusting my manual camera settings to a wide open aperture and a 1/1000 shutter speed, I adjust my camera ISO according to what my light meter says on my camera. Some indoor locations are better than others, but the darker ones I will have to crank up my ISO, which means there will be more grain in my photos. The better lit gyms will have me shooting at a lower ISO to help reduce grain. This all depends entirely on the camera you are shooting on as well. I shoot on the Nikon Z 6iii which is better at handling low-light situations, so my average ISO I shoot for basketball games is 3200. Some people may disagree with me on this, but it is all up to personal preference and what you’re willing to sacrifice for the shot. 

4. Manual/Aperture Priority Modes

As an experienced photographer, I NEVER recommend anyone use the automatic setting on their camera. I like being able to have full control of my camera at all times to ensure I’m capturing exactly what I want. Now that you know the 3 main photography settings a camera has to offer, you can shoot in manual mode! If you’d like to experiment with other camera settings, you can also try aperture priority mode (The A on Nikon camera dials and AV on Canon). What this setting does is it creates an automatic shutter speed based on your chosen aperture and ISO settings. One thing to look out for when shooting indoors with aperture priority is slower shutter speeds which may result in more image blur.

5. White Balance

Some gyms or indoor locations in general will have an (in my opinion, UGLY) yellow-orange cast on all the photos. The way to fix this is to play with your camera’s white balance settings to see which one looks the best for where you are shooting. Again, this all comes down to preference, but I like having more cool tones when shooting sports compared to warm ones. Go into your camera’s white balance settings and play with the different white balance options your camera offers. Some cameras will have fluorescent, incandescent, and/or shadow presets, while others may be more specific. Most cameras have the option to manually adjust how much blue, orange, green, or purple the tints are in photos, and you can manually adjust the slider when clicking on white balance and play around with the colors to see what setting works best with your environment. I also love the automatic presets my Nikon Z 6iii has. The preset I use the most is the “reduce warmer tones” one, where the camera still adjusts the white balance automatically, but removes warmer tones. 

6. Autofocus Settings

This is a huge one! Since I shoot Nikon, my camera settings will be different, and I’m not sure what the exact settings for Canon or Sony are, but on my mirrorless Z 6iii, I shoot AF-C 3D tracking. This is autofocus-continuous, where the camera is constantly focusing on the subject that you lock in on, and the 3D tracking helps to focus on subjects that are moving around. On my older camera (Nikon D7500) that didn’t have this setting, I stayed in AF-C mode constantly and never changed it, and moved the focus point around accordingly by using the arrow buttons on the front of the camera. (Oh, and if your camera has an AF button on the back that allows for customization, set it to your focus button so that your thumb can do the focusing instead of the shutter button!)

7. Flicker Reduction

This is a tiny detail that I always forget about, but if your camera has flicker reduction, use it! It helps with scoreboards and prevents the numbers from flickering and disappearing in shots. This is because sometimes the camera is much faster than the lights on the scoreboard, so the camera can capture those in between moments of the lights flickering (there is a physical science explanation behind this about lights flashing around 120 times every second so you can see the in between moments of the lights flashing in the photos).

8. Composition

This is quite frankly one of the most important things to know in sports photography and is also all entirely preference based. Composition in simplest terms refers to how the image is set up and how subjects are positioned within the frame. Composition can consist of many different artistic elements, including rule of thirds, symmetry, balance, depth of field, etc. When I was first starting out a year ago, a sports photographer who had been shooting basketball games for decades told me that the best photos are the ones where the basketball is touching the hands of the player, not when it’s touching the floor during dribbling. I found this very helpful, and I agree that it looks much nicer, but again, this is all according to YOUR preference and what YOU want. Knowing a good composition for your photos will help improve them tremendously. I personally don’t care for shots of the players from behind as I like to see their faces, but there is only so much you can do sometimes for angles. Getting better at coming up with a proper composition for your photos takes time and experience, so I recommend just going out there and seeing what works best for you and experiment with your style!

Conclusion

I hope this guide helped you in figuring out those pesky camera settings. Being a beginner is not easy, and it took me several games to get it right (and I’m still learning!) My best advice is to just get out there and try it, and who knows, maybe you’ll fall in love with it like I did!

What are some of your favorite sports to photograph? Let me know! :)

I'm Sadie Lynn, and thank you for reading this edition of Photog with a Blog. Until next time, bye guys!