The “Sports” or “Action” settings of a digital camera are not the only things you can use or do to get great sporting photos. In the digital photography of sport the user has a much larger l role to play than in other types of photography as the timing of the photos have to be perfect – and there is just a split second in which to take it.
When taking pictures of a game being played on a large field there are two ways of ensuring that you are ready at the right time a second’s delay could cost you the photo you have been waiting for. Your first option is to follow the action as it moves around the field with your camera ready to take the photo the moment the action you want to capture occurs – this is the best way of taking picture of sports where the action can occur anywhere, like hockey and football. In the case of sports like basket ball and baseball where there are a few points where the action you want to record will occur, the option for you is to keep the camera focused on a particular point – the batter of the basket – and be ready to take the picture when the action happens.
However, no matter how quick your reflexes are in pressing the shutter button, there will be a time lag from the time you press the button to the time the picture is taken as the camera will need to adjust its setting. Although this time lag is almost imperceptible – only a fraction of a second – that is enough for you to miss the crucial moment. You can solve this problem by keeping the shutter button pressed half way so that the camera is always in the auto focus mode and no time will be lost between the pressing of the button and the shutter action. Another tip is the use the “burst” or “continuous” mode where the camera will continue to take a rapid series of pictures for as long as the button is pressed. You will get a chain of pictures of the event and can then pick the best ones to keep.
There is one other thing that can slow you down and that is the time taken to write a photo to the memory card – the camera cannot take a photo until the previous one has been stored and a card with a slow write time will slow down the camera. Invest in a card with a high write speed to reduce the intervals and delays.
