Shooting Quick Moving Action

Hi All,

 

I am trying to figure out how those cameramen at sports games take such great

photos.

 

I have a Canon 10D, 28-70 L & and 70-200 L lenses. I usually shoot portraits.

 

I was sitting about 15 feet away from my son the other day, while he was

running & jumping around in the backyard. I wanted to catch the action, so i

set the camera in shutter priority (Tv), set the shutter to about speed to 250.

 

The problem is that he was running around so fast that I would find it hard

autofocusing because he was so quick. I was moving my camera around like crazy

trying to focus on him and he would just jump out of focus and the camera would

start searching for a focus point again.

 

How you shoot fast action that's far away from where you are. Some of the

pictures are out of focus.

 

Any ideas to focus on superman while he's going 100mph? Please help...

 

Tx

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=2081"> http://www.photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=2081</a>

well......one thing is that sports have a definite plan of action to them. Learn the sport, learn how the players move...their defensive and offensive plays....and usually you can anticipate where the player will be. Your son is just randomly running around.

 

Keep the other eye open....the one not looking thru the viewfinder.

 

seperate the exposure and focus. Default is that both are in the shutterbutton. Pretty sure the 10D allows you to move the focus to the "*" button on the back. Look in your manual. This way you can hold the shutterbutton half way down for the exposure, and tap the * button when you need to focus.

 

Theres a "white paper" some where on Canon's Learning Center that explains all this........a ggogle search should work. Maybe. But I forget right now where I found it.

<br><br>it's for a different camera, so you won't have ALL the options, but the first section of <a href="http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/EOS_Digital.pdf"><u>this</u></a> goes into it quite heavily.

and don't use "T". Av, set wide-open, and selectively autofocus.

The only answer I've ever found is to shoot, shoot, shoot. Even with film it makes sense. I've always worked on the basis that one picture, which shows what you want, has to be better than thirty six that don't. With digital, it makes even more sense. Of course you'll throw a lot away but I think you will be surprised at how rapidly practice will reduce the chuckout ratio.<div></div>