Sport settings

[chriscorbin]

i have a nikon D50 and i need to take pics of my cousin's little league team, i could just use the sport setting but i want to try diffrent setting and i was wondering what should i start with?
i am using a 55-200 lens
it will be bright during the game
what f-stop should i use
what aperture

am i looking at this thing the wrong way

i always use sport mode for everything so forgive me if i ask stupid questions

 

[miloblithe]

I like to use aperture priority mode. Maybe that's just me. I was taking pictures at a baseball game last night, setting the aperture at the widest setting possible (lowest number) and setting the ISO to either 800 or 1600. The guideline for zooms is that the shutter speed should be at least equal to 1 over the focal length, so if you're shooting at 200mm, I guess that's 1/200 of a second (or is it 1/300 because of the conversion factor?). Of course, with sports, you may want faster than that to freeze action, or slower to show motion.

 

[jlcharles]

I agree on aperture priority. I use a 70-200 f/2.8 wide open and during bright sun, I can get a 1/2000th shutter speed at ISO100, I don't know what your max aperture is, but as long as you can keep over 1/500th you should be good. The bat will be blurry, but that's ok.

Take a look at this for some pointers.

http://www.digital-eos.com/PDF/Shooting_LLB_Baseball_Handbook.pdf

That's linked on Fredmiranda, on the sports board under it's shooting resources. You can take a look there to get some more ideas too. You have to be a member to get into the boards though.

 

[D.G.]

I'd agree on the aperture priority, however be sure to check over your early shots as soon as you get a chance in case you need to tweak settings. Your ISO will effect the shutter speed (higher ISO = faster shutter speed), but increasing it will increase the noise.

I say you should check your shots early because it can catch you out. My wife and I were shooting some greyhounds running, and we'd discussed settings all week and decided on aperture priority for the reasons suggested by others above: Widest aperture (lowest f number) gives you the fastest shutter speed for your current ISO. If the light changes your shutter speed changes. The problem was that I was set at ISO 400, and my wife was set to 100. She felt disappointed because she got some shots which would have been far better than mine, but were blurry due to a slower shutter speed. If she'd have examined the shots early in camera she could have seen what was happening and upped the ISO before it was too late.

Your other option is to use the AUTO ISO to your advantage. It won't help for aperture priority because it doesn't kick in until much slower shutter speeds (I'm assuming the D50's auto ISO isn't any different to my D80's), but if you wanted you could go with shutter priority and use it.

In shutter priority, you'd pick a decent shutter speed (1/500 or faster), and the aperture will change depending on the light. When you reach your highest aperture, it would start to underexpose the picture, but instead the auto ISO will kick in and up your ISO. This way you can start at ISO 100, and the camera will increase it depending on the light.

DG

 

[compuwar]

I'm going to be the odd one out, and disagree with aperture priority. For sports, you generally want to show *action*. Getting a frozen shot of a play is easy, but you don't get motion with that, so shooting in aperture priority, especially with the camera at its largest aperture is going to give a nice DoF, but likely freeze the action unless the lighting and your lens happen to coincide with the right shutter speed. I'd shoot instead in shutter priority, and change the shutter speed to get the best subject motion going, panning with any runners, but probably a slightly higher speed for batting shots, where you just want the tip of the bat blurring.

 

[b0tt094]

I'm going to be the odd one out, and disagree with aperture priority. For sports, you generally want to show *action*. Getting a frozen shot of a play is easy, but you don't get motion with that, so shooting in aperture priority, especially with the camera at its largest aperture is going to give a nice DoF, but likely freeze the action unless the lighting and your lens happen to coincide with the right shutter speed. I'd shoot instead in shutter priority, and change the shutter speed to get the best subject motion going, panning with any runners, but probably a slightly higher speed for batting shots, where you just want the tip of the bat blurring.

Ur not the only one, I do shutter too, I believe in most of my cases I have to worry about the blur of the ball before i worry about hoe the background looks behind it.