Sports Photography

I haven’t shot sports in decades so this photo will have to do. It’s one of 1,500 images shot for a local charity during one of their fundraisers.

As with a lot of indoor action photography this was shot at a high ISO and a prime fast lens. Pretty sure this was shot with a 50mm f/1.8 lens and looking at the minimal depth of field I’d say it was shot wide open.

So what does work for indoor sports shooting as you’re never going to be allowed to shoot with flash?

First thing is you absolutely must get out of the stands and shoot from the sidelines. If you look like you know what you’re doing and you’re not in the way of the players, the coaches, the referees and especially the organizers mostly they will leave you alone.

So to shoot basketball shooting at an ISO of 800 or 1600 a great place to shoot is from behind the net sitting on the floor with a 35mm f/2 or better lens. A 28 or even a 24mm f/2 or f/2.8 will yield amazing images.

For floor hockey or anything on the gym floor that involves a lot of movement it’s a good idea to place yourself at one end of the gym and experiment with corners of the floor and shoot horizontal with a 85 or 50mm prime.

If you’re in a well-lit gym you can get a way with a zoom but generally most gyms, especially gyms in schools are too dim and most zooms are too slow to yield consistently good results.

Banging your ISO much above ISO 2000 or so in some cameras is going to need significant software fixing which may or may not work.

Hockey is great if you can shoot over the glass. Back in my day there was no glass protecting the audience stopping at the goal line. It was easy to stand at the edge of the glass and pre-focus on the net and shoot whenever the action came down the ice. Remember now we’re talking a 105mm f/2.5 lens and TRI-X black and white film pushed to 1600.

For some sports like gymnastics or high diving look for the moment when the athlete’s motion is stopped for a brief second. That’s when you should be prefocused and ready to shoot.

Same for martial arts or wrestling just wait for a moment when the two competitors are locked into a moment and the action stops. You could in theory shoot this shot a 1/30 of a second LOL as nobody is moving.

Shooting sports indoors is a lot of fun and with a little planning you can do it with most film and digital cameras and you don’t need a full Olympics pro-level set up to get great images.