Today, a few more words about the “real life” Karate Championship shooting I did on Friday and Saturday.

As you read yesterday, the light was low, meaning I had to shoot at 10,000 ISO (yes, ten thousand) at f/2.8 to get to a mere 1/160th second, which is kind of the minimum I would like. Even at that speed, motion blurs:

But what were the other challenges, other than the fast lenses and high ISO needed? I ask because while I have pointed out many times that photography is basically simple, it is in meeting the limits, overcoming the problems, that you get to be really good.

One: the dim light also makes focusing unreliable. Even on my 1Dx, I got a lot of incorrectly focused shots. Remedy: shoot more; focus as accurately as you can using cross-point sensors (the centre one, on most cameras, is always cross-point), and focus on cpntrasty areas (the collar, for instance).

Two: the very red nature of the light – about 2,500K in this ballroom, redder than a normal incandescent lightbulb – is not good even when you set the camera to “Tungsten” white balance. So you need to correct it afterward – meaning RAW is best.

Three: RAW is slower, so you lose some shots due to the camera catching up with writing to the memory cards.

Four: the salmon and blue floor mat mean that in every picture, the bottom of the white suits looks either salmon or blue, which makes it look like the white balance is off. It’s not – it’s just the tungsten light reflecting off the floor.

Five: the competitors move unpredictably, so you need to:

1. Shoot wide to ensure you do not cut them out of the frame.
2. Use continuous focus (AI Servo/AF-C).
3. Shoot sequences of shots.
4. Use not one focus spot, but several (9 or more), to give the camera a chance to track the subject.

Six: in Karate, the subject turns away from you much of the time. The judges are on the other side, so lots pf shots of the subjects’ back. Just be ready to shoot in the few seconds you have, when the subject is looking your way.

Seven: the background is not of your choosing. Do the best you can, and throw it out of focus as much as you are able.

As you see here, there’s quite a lot of real life “working with limitations” going on in a real shoot – not just the basic thinking of “ISO+Aperture+Shutter = Exposure”.

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NOTE! Want to learn how to use off-camera flash using “Master-Slave”/”Commander-Remote” TTL flash control for your Nikon or Canon system?  Do not miss my evening course in Hamilton on Friday: http://cameratraining.ca/Flash-TTL.html. This and other upcoming workshops on http://cameratraining.ca/Schedule.html. Book now to guarantee your place.

So on warm sunny days, when you shoot summer outdoor sports…. hey wait. It is -23.5 C outside, here in Mono, Ontario.

But yes, I thought this would be a nice time to give you a walk-through of an outside summer sports picture, like this Rugby shot from July 4, 2010:

Rugby game

So how do you shoot outdoors sports?

• Perhaps S/Tv mode with a fast shutter speed, or A/Av mode with a wide open aperture. I prefer Av mode, wide open, so that I can be sure that the fastest possible speed will be selected. Manual is also possible of course. In the shot above, I used Aperture mode at f/3.2.
• I used an ISO setting of 200 – just a little faster than 100.
• This gave me a shutter speed of 1/3200 second.
• The lens was a 200mm lens – namely the 70-200 f/2.8 at 200mm on the 1D, meaning 260 effective mm.
• Use AI Focus/AF-C focusing mode!
• And use one focus point.
• Look closely at the background: looks like turbulent air is making the background look, well, a little turbulent. This is normal on artificial turf, and this will limit what you can do in terms of distance.
• As a wide aperture I try to shoot groups of people in the same plane of focus, as in this image – either that or single players.
• Obviously you will be using continuous shutter: click click click click click.
• To enable this, use a fast memory card.
• Position yourself so that you catch players with the sun coming into their faces – not on the back of their heads!
• Try to catch expression/emotion if you can. Quite a lot of that in there I think.
• Sports like Rugby are also colorful – all good.
• I shoot RAW, but sports is the one occasion when sometimes I shoot JPG – smaller files and faster clicks.

I thought a quick outdoor sports picture would be nice for today’s belated post – I remember sweating on that day.

A distant memory now that it is -23.5 C! Almost time to drive to Scarborough to teach “Travel Photography” at 1pm (there’s space!).