Soccer shoot

<p>I'm shooting a soccer game for the first time at 7 p.m. with a nikon lens 200mm, 2.8. I need advice on the fstop and shutter speed for good stop action shots.</p>

<p>What camera are you using? What time does the sun go down at your latitude? Will there be any artificial lighting on the field?<br /><br />You probably don't want less than 1/500th if you can keep the shutter speed up that high. That will mean using the lens wide open at f/2.8, and then using as high an ISO setting as you can stand (in terms of image quality and noise) in order to get a good exposure. Different cameras behave very differently in that regard, which is why I asked which one you'll be using.</p>

<p>My basic startng settings for Soccer for my D300 are;<br>

Aperture Priority. I generally start around f3.5 to get subject isolation.<br>

Auto ISO / Minimum shutter speed set to on. I use max ISO 1600 min shutter speed 1/800.<br>

Depending on the lighting and the speed of the game I then have the option of upping the max iso to 3200 or opening the aperture to f3.2 or even f2.8 or slowing the min shutter speed down. I generally try to retain the shutter speed above other variables because Soccer moves so quick in random directions that you can't really pan very successfully and a slow shutter speed will always result in blurry arms or legs regardless of how well everything else works.</p>

<p>i shoot alot of soccer, and my advice is to shoot wide open, shutter no less than 500+, anticipate the play if you can, the ball moves fast, and watch for facial emotion after a goal. keep an eye on the sidelines as well for coaches movements, goalies are fun to shoot when ball is driven towards them, and move around the field for a variety of angles. enjoy.</p>

 

<p>Recommend using shutter priority mode with a speed of 1/500 or 1/600. Let the camera deal with the aperture and ISO settings.</p>

<p>Some other pointers: make sure that you focus on the player's eyes. Setting your focus point to the top middle does this. The best pictures are those with the player's faces and the ball. This is not always easy to get but this should be your goal. Also set your camera to burst mode so that you can capture lots of pictures. At a typical kids' soccer game, I take 400-600 pictures and I edit them down to 50-60. I also delete a lot of the obvious bad pictures in camera during breaks, which saves a lot of post processing time. </p>

<p>If someone scores a goal or makes an amazing play, immediately focus on that player to capture their reaction. Those are sometimes the best pictures. Also take pictures of the coach talking to the players. These are sometimes good plus the coach will appreciate being in some of the pictures.</p>

 

<p>You may also want to use your cameras Center Focus point as well as "motor drive" mode so you can get action sequences. Also check your focusing modes (AI Servo on Canon) so your camera tracks the moving players. And using a monopod will help a lot in reducing camera shake. Have fun!</p>

 

<blockquote>Recommend using shutter priority mode with a speed of 1/500 or 1/600. Let the camera deal with the aperture and ISO settings.</blockquote>

<p>We have a fundamental disagreement there. Using shutter priority and letting the camera select the aperture means that during reasonably bright daylight you will get no subject isolation because the camera will select a large aperture. That won't be an issue for the OP at night but I prefer to have some control over what is in focus in the shots.</p>

<p>If it is dark by game time, then the stadium lights should keep things pretty constant, making it easier to shoot in full manual mode. I've also had times where shooting players in black/dark jersey's makes my camera think I'm way under-exposed when in fact I'm right where I need to be (another reason not to rely on camera selected ISO/aperture)</p>

<p>Depends on how fast your players are --- I shoot a Club Soccer league of 12 years old girls that are playing at the Gold Level and if I shot at 1/500 to 1/600 I wouldn't have much to show + the ball would be blurred most of the time.<br>

I have a 70-200mm f2.8 VR II on my D300 and I set it f2.8 and basically leave it there. I set my ISO to insure at least 1/1000 of a second and I like 1/1500 if I can get it.<br>

Some tips! You're 200mm end of the lens isn't really long enough to cover more than about 25% of the field so get along one of the corners with the sun to your back and shoot the action as it comes toward you --- or you can move down the field near the far touch-line and shoot action around the keeper on the other end -- keep the sun to your back.<br>

Watch the backgrounds as you can't sell a shot with a porta-pottie in the background.<br>

Stay as low as you can, especially if the backgrounds are bad. This is very important for younger players. <br>

Take a large CF card and shoot a lot but try not to machine gun pics as you will probably miss the peak of action.<br>

As you are new to soccer suggest you don't try to shoot to tight as the speed of the game will probably cause you to cut off a lot of body parts ---- I still have that problem once in awhile --- it takes a lot of practice.</p>

<p>Good luck</p>

<blockquote>

<p>2.8 and basically leave it there. I set my ISO to insure at least 1/1000 of a second</p>

<p>How do you do that?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Not sure I understand the question Jan? Bill's post was quite self-explanatory - if he set ISO400 and the shutter speed reads 1/250th sec he'll nudge it up to ISO1600 so it get 1/1000th sec. If the sun comes out and the shutter speed rockets up to 1/4000th sec he might knock it down to 400 or 800 again to reduce noise but keep 1/1000th sec. On the D3 you can even do this automatically with the Auto ISO setting.<br>

Steve</p>

 

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>My question was how you could set an aperture and a _minimum shutter_ - and then leave it to the camera to set the ISO. My 5d2 let's me select auto ISO but only takes into consideration the focal lenght and not the need for stopping motion. Meaning: on a 50mm, I set the aperture to F4 and ISO = auto. The camera will then balance the ISO to acheive a shutter of 1/50 - which is no good in sports, like in this example.</p>

<p>I heard that canon introduced this on 7d and others (later models), but still no firmware update for the 5d2, as far as i know.</p>

<p>Bummer.</p>

<p>But okay, not THAT big a deal end of the day ;-)</p>

<p>OK, I think you misunderstood Jan, he was saying that he fixed his aperture at f2.8, then looked at the shutter speed he was getting and manually adjusted the ISO to get it to 1/1000th second. So if he was on ISO400 at 1/1000th sec and the light dropped making his shutter speed go down to 1/250th he'd knock up the ISO to 1600 to get it back to 1/1000th.<br>

Again, the D3 can do this automatically, and you can dial in a minimum ISO or shutter speed - so you could put 1/1000th as the minimum and the ISO would always be adjusted high enough to keep it at or above this. It's a cool idea and a lot of folks use it but I still prefer to do it manually - crikey, how much automation do we need?!<br>

Steve</p>