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I've been shooting American Football for two years & got my league soccer (& rugby) licence a few months ago which means I get to cover professional soccer & rubgy.
I shot the Stevenage v Reading FA Cup game this weekend.
I've done 5 soccer games & 1 rugby game so far so I'm still very much learning my trade. It's ironic really since I don't actually like soccer & know nothing about the game, but I love sports photography.
So far I've had one shot in the Daily Mirror but it's a very cut-throat game, this weekend there were 20 plus photographers all vying for the chance of probably 6 or 7 shots in the nationals.
Sports photographers have amongst the most expensive kit in the business. It's not unsual for them to have 2 or 3 bodies costsing over 4 grand a piece, then lenses which cost between 3 & 8 grand.
I guess when you are vying with such competition, the ability to fire off 10 frames a second in order to catch the precise moment the ball goes in the net, at night under floodlights, you need the kit that will do the job.
As I say, I'm still learning my way as far as soccer goes but this is what I'm finding.
On my 70-200 I try to keep the shutter speed higher than 1/640. On my 600mm I keep it above 1/1000 or 1/1250. I recently bought a 300mm f2.8 but have only used it at two games so far, but imagine I'll be aiming for 1/800 plus.
This is fine on a bright sunny day, you can get away with ISO 200 or 400, but as soon as it is overcast, winter afternoon, going in to evening, you need to start ramping up the ISO.
My matches usually KO at 3pm which means they are dull to start & dark to end, under floodlights. To maintain high shutter speeds I can be shooting as high as ISO 8000.
For soccer you need to freeze the action, unlike motor sports where a bit of creative slow shutter & panning is the order of the day, team sports usualy require sharp action stopping sequences.
And ball sports usually require the ball to be in the shot.
I usually shoot in manual so I have control over the exposure. Some may suggest shooting in shutter priority but the problem arises when team shirts are tonally quite different, or the background is very light or very dark, your camera adjusts the exposure & you run the risk of players being over or under exposed. The nightmare scenario is when a team in white plays a team in black, the exposure will depend on how muchy of the white shirt is in the shot compared to how much of the black shirt & is the precise exposure point mainly black or white?
Therefore I tend to shoot a few shots while the players are warming up on AE mode then look at the pictures on the screen & decide what is a reasonable average manual setting. This means your exposure is consistent & not based on how much extraneous light is or isn't in the frame. (I shot at MK Dons a few weeks ago, it was a nightmare as the stand opposite was empty, mainly balck seats but occasional white seats spelling out the team name - your exposure is adjusted depending on how much black or white is in the frame, not so bad when the crowd is full as you get an average tonal background)
Having set the exposure manually, you must readjust throughout the match as the light fades. I usually do this by upping the ISO every so often & keeping the shutter speeds fast. I check the screen (or chimp) after sequences of shots just to make sure they are still exposing OK.
I shoot in jpg. Team sports is the only time I don't do RAW, this is because I need to send shots off to the agency asap, even at half-time on the laptop & a RAW workflow would take too long. For American football I might shoot 700 shots in a game & I post most of them on my website for the players to look at, again RAW would just take too long.
If you're not worried about speed then you could shoot in RAW & have some latitude in post processing.
I always shoot on a wide aperture, on my 600 this means F4, on the 70-200 I might go to 3.5 or 4, I don't go down to 2.8 unless light is a real issue.
You want minimum depth of field so the emphasis is on the players & not the crowd or players 30 yards off the ball.
In American football, I can move up & down the line to always be in the best position for the action, in professional soccer/rubgy you are more or less limited to sticking to one position & it is luck of the draw as to whether you are in a good position. Lots of people tend to stick to behind one of the goals, if you've only got a reach of 105mm you're going to struglle, but then again, if you are just shooting local club soccer, move with the action, if one team is dominating, stay up near the other team's goal.
As I said, I'm not an expert in soccer photography, but am feeling my way. I've not received any assistance from any other photographers (I mentioned it's a bit cut-throat) so am kind of self-teaching by discovery, and probably at a bit of a disadvantage as I know nothing about the game, I stopped following it when I discovered Rugby aged about 11.
I've done League Two & One so far but hoping to make the move to Championship & Premier rugby if I can produce the goods.
I hope this helps, any questions, just ask.
Last edited by Cathus; 31-01-11 at 09:28 AM.
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29-01-11, 08:53 AM
