Jan 18

Examples of hand-held panning sports photography by George Ross

By admin sports photography, track and field 1 Comment »
George Ross's sports photography, panning at 1/125th second

Panning at 1/125th second

After my post on hand-held panning, I received many questions about:

  • the best shutter speed
  • the amount of blur

The best shutter speed will be the slowest shutter speed that you are comfortable with and as you improve your skills you will be able to shoot at very slow shutter speeds. Panning is all about capturing speed in your images, the greater the blur, the greater the speed. There is a trade-off…..your capture rate!  because, the slower you shoot the higher your failure rate.

I recommend that beginners start off panning at motor sports events because motor vehicles move very fast and their position on the track is pretty predictable. Once you master motor sports then and only then would I recommend that you shoot athletes. However, there is nothing to stop you starting with athletes but be prepared for a high failure rate but with digital photography that does not carry the same heartache as it did for ‘us’  film photographers.

George Ross's sports photography, panning at 1/125th second

Panning at 1/60th second

To help you decide what type of blur you would like to achieve, I have attached examples  1/125th second, 1/60th second and and an ‘amazing’ 1/30th second. What’s amazing about this shot? Try setting your camera to 1/30th with a large lens and taking a sharp static image!

A couple of points  to note:

* point of focus – becomes smaller the slower your shutter speed. This is because when shooting athletes only the torso will be in synch. with the camera because the arms, legs and background are all moving at different speeds and in different directions; and this can be seen clearly by looking at all three shots. This is another reason why motorsports is easier to pan…the vehicle moves at one speed and in one direction.

* amount of blur – as I stated earlier the slower the shutter speed the greater the blur but the relationship between the camera, the object and the backgound all come into play. take a few test shots and don’t be affraid to move around to get the best effect. I prefer shooting athletes directly in front of  spectators because people wear cloths and hats of diffent color and that makes a spectacular blurred effect.

George Ross's sports photography, panning at 1/125th second

Panning at 1/30th second

It is a whole lot of fun and quite simply, INMHO, ‘the’ best style of sports photography.  The best advice I can offer is to go to an event, try, try and try again.This is not a technique that you can read in a book and then run out and shoot great images, shot-after-shot.  Play with your settings and find out what works for your body, your physical body because your body is the tripod for this kind of shot.

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Jan 11

8FRU4Q893S86

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8FRU4Q893S86

Jan 11

Stay with the action: Shalane Flanagan breaking the American 5K indoor record

By admin track and field No Comments »
Shalane Flanagan Breaking the American, indoor, 5K record

Shalane Flanagan Breaking the American, indoor, 5K record

On February 8th, 2009, I was fortunate to be covering the Reebok Boston indoor games for New England Runner magazine and while there were many great races at this meet, including a spectacular high school boys 1 miler, the big race  of the day was the Women’s 5K. The Bejing Olympic bronze medalist   and Massachusetts local, Shalane Flanagan (breaking the American 10K record in the process with 30:22:22) was tipped to break the American 5K indoor record. It was a small but loaded field with Jen Rhines, Mary Cullen (who set a new Irish 5K record during the race ) and Sentayehu Ejigu of Ethiopia who ran a blistering 14:35 in 2004.  My task was to shoot the ‘hometown girl’ and, of course, the race action.

I was positioned on the 2nd turn and paid little heed to the finish line because it was across the other side of the track, and the pole vault was active during the the race.

For lenses I used the 70-200mm L series IS f/2.8 and for my wide angle and panning work I used the 24-70mm L series IS f/2.8 mounted on to a pair of Canon EOS 40D’s. The lighting wasn’t great but I was able to operate at ISO1600.

The race was tremendous with Ejigu letting Flanagan do all the work until the last lap,. when it turned in to one of the greatest finishes of all time and Ejigu and Flanagan were neck and neck for the last 200m. When I took my last shots with 150m to go I sensed what was about to happen and stayed with the race. Now, I was using a 200 which was too short to shoot across the track but with the 1.63 crop factor of the 40D it just about gave me reach. I just kept firing, following Shalane, and kept firing producing the shots in the collage below.In this collage of 6 frames, you can see Ejigu running down Flanagan during the last 50m and eventually winning by  a Gnat’s nose.

Now, are these images perfect? No, but these capture  two tremendous athletes reaching for the line, where one broke the American Indoor record with a time of 14:47.618 which was only good enough for second place, beaten by 0.005 of a second as Ejigu ran 14:47.613…make them kinda special!!!

To see a larger version of this image click here

shalane_flanagan_breaking_5K_american_indoor_record

Even though I wasn’t suitably equipped I stayed with the action and put this finish on record.

Shot  settings:

  • IS01600
  • f/2.8
  • 1/400th
  • Metering  - center-weighted average
  • Focal length 200mm

technorati….8FRU4Q893S86

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Jan 08

Improve your sports photography by panning

By admin sports photography No Comments »

Without a shadow of a doubt, my favorite style of sports photography is ‘panning’ a method of blurring the background while  maintaining focus on the subject. I find that this type of imagery ranks very high on the ‘wow factor’ but like most aspects of photography, it just takes a little understanding and a lot of practice. While the image in the wheel chair (below)  was taken with a modern digital SLR, the photograph of the motorcycle was shot in 1977 using a mechanical focal-plane shutter roll-film camera.  Entry level cameras were (in the UK) , typically,  Praktica single lens reflex roll-film (remember film?) cameras from East Germany,  with no automatic settings.

Craig Thompson, East Fortune racetrack, Scotland, 1977

Everything was manual and what a great way to learn ones craft using only manual settings. I use a different technique for panning now from when I used the Praktica, I don’t need to but I leverage technology (a.k.a. being lazy) but the technique used to shoot the motocycle was:

  • pre-focus, manually, on the point in the road where I thought the motorcycle would pass
  • set the shutter speed to 1/60th second
  • because I was using ISO 200 film, there was little room to play with exposure
  • take a few practice swings to get my body nice and smooth
  • start tracking the motorcycle 50 yards before the pre-focused spot in the road and smoothly follow the bike with the camera and when it arrives at the pre-focused spot press the shutter but do not stop tracking the bike…follow through to keep your action, very, very smooth

I won my very first photography competition with this shot,  and my addiction to photography began, with earnest.

So, what’s different today? In digital SLR cameras we can adjust the ISO ratings to compensate for the weather playing havoc  with our exposures and secondly, with the advances in auto-focusing we can track moving obects without having to pre-focus which allows a little room for error. There is absolutely no reason why you should not still-pre-focus but that is simple a personal choice. I did not prefocus for the shot below, the camera did all the work. If your camera/lens combination cannot respond fast enough, don’t worry, just manually pre-focus…there are no excuses!

The shot below of Masazumi Soejima placing 2nd in the 2009 Boston Marathon wheelchair division,    was taken on a Canon EOS 40D with a 24mm to 70mm L series f/2.8 USM lens. the camera settings were

  • aperture-priority
  • 1/50th second
  • ISO400
  • f/18
  • center-weighted metering
  • focal length 70mm

Masazumi Soejima, 2009 Boston Marathon

The degree of ‘blur’ is controlled by the shutter speed and that will be relative to the speed of the moving oject. My rule-of-thumb is to start between 1/60th and 1/100. Why? No reason other than lots of experimentation and failure over the years and then adjust up or down. For some of my track and fiedl shots I lowered the shutter speed to 1/30th which produces totally radical results and while I plan on discussing that in later blog entries  – you can see some examples here  http://digitalphotoconcept.smugmug.com/Track-and-Field/2009-RITCA-Coaches/A-selection-of-the/10707444_bDXvH (scroll to the bottom of the gallery)

If you want spectacular sports shots, a bit different from the ordinary, then I recommend that you try panning. The rule-of-thumb is that the faster the object the easier it is to pan. Why? because the faster you pan the smoother will be your panning action.

It is likely that your first few attempts will be totally blurred, not worry just delete the image and try again. Practice does make perfect.

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Jan 05

Catching the action: Scottish Premier League

By admin Soccer, sports photography 3 Comments »
Hibs versus Hamilton, 12/13/2009, Scottish Premier League

Hibs versus Hamilton, 12/13/2009, Scottish Premier League

In sports photography, if you see it and press the shutter it is to late you will have missed the moment. It only takes a fraction of second for a receiver to pull a ball down to safety of for a bat to hit a line drive or for an upper-cut to land. Our human reflexes are simply not quick enough to react to the action.

We must know what is about to happen to shoot it; and therein lies the mantra of a good sports photographer…capturing what is ‘about to’ happen. In the example above Hamilton Accies defender, Jamie McCarthy, leaps well above the slide-tackle from the over-enthusiastic John Rankin (Hibernian).

How did I catch this shot? Well, it comes down to having a good understanding of the sport that you are shooting and especially all of the inside stuff that goes on within  any given sport. In this match, about five minutes before the play above,  referee Winter made a call which caused the home team (Hibernian) fans to erupt in anger at this ‘poor’ referring decision and this was immediately followed by a couple of tackles that were ‘finished off’. Now, from my vantage point on the sidelines, I could feel the anger of the crowd transfer to the players – I had 18,000 angry fans breathing down my neck. It was only a question of time until someone would take the law into their own hands. I knew there would be a bad tackle, I could feel it….it was only a matter of time.

The settings for this shot:

  • Aperture-priority
  • Center-weighted average metering
  • ISO 3200  (it was night game in the rain)
  • 1/800th
  • f/2.8 @ 400mm

Unfortunately, I was not using my own gear due to the difficulty in insuring my gear to travel, so I rented a  Canon EOS 40D and the wicked Canon 400mm f/2.8 from Calumet Camera in Edinburgh

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Jan 04

The story behind the cover shot of New England Runner, January 2010

By admin sports photography No Comments »
New England Runner magazine cover by George Ross

New England Runner magazine cover by George Ross

As a token of thanks to Providence College’s media athletic director, Jenn Rynearson, I offered to shoot the PC team competing in the NCAA Northeast Region Division 1 XC Championship held in Franklin Park in Boston on 11/14/2009. When I woke up that morning the weather was absolutely awful as Hurricane Ida developed into a classic Nor’easter and by the time that she was done, 7″ of rain had fallen in the Boston area. Just the thought of photographing an XC meet in a rainstorm gave me goose-bumps. I drove up to Boston in twice the time that it should normally have taken, got my rain gear on and tried to locate the PC Athletic trainer, Kristen Duhamel. Easier said than done in a torrential downpour, but I found Kristen standing in mud and  peering out under her rain hood as she cared for her team. Once I got the lie of the land it was time to get wet.

It was clear that my shoot plan had to be torn up because the mud was so deep that simply trying to walk with 20lbs of camera gear was going to be dangerous. I rarely use a monopod but today I did, not for camera stability but for my stability!!  Earlier on in the day 3,500 high school kids took part in the state XC championship and seriously cut up the course before the collegiate runners toed the line. The rain just never stopped – there was variation in intensity, but it never stopped. I was using two Canon EOS 40D’s, one paired with the fantastic 70mm-200mm L series IS f/2.8 and the other with a canon L series f/2.0 prime, the cameras were set to aperture priority, center-weighted exposure and hi-res jpegs, I seldom use RAW for large events. It was clear that lighting was going to be a challenge. During the men’s race that went off first, I used the 70mm-200mm set to f/2.8 with the ISO set to ISO 3200 (the maximum for the 40D)  but during the women’s race I had to switch to the prime because f/2.8 was simply not fast enough. The prime did not perform to well and my shot consistency was not that great but that is a problem with the 40D body and not the lens. The 40D is not as responsive to autofocus in combination with continuous speed shooting in low light conditions. I nearly overlooked the most important piece of equipment, the Aquatech rain jacket - if you ever find yourself struggling to pay $240 for a camera rain jacket, don’t even think about it and pay the money because as a sports shooter it will be one of your best investments.  Why? because it will get you shooting in conditions where others will fear to tread; and on this day, it got me a magazine cover.

View the photo gallery  from this muddy race

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Jan 03

Canon EOS 7D overcomes sports complex lighting, with superb image quality, at high ISO levels

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Providence, RI,  has a wonderful new track and field facility at 90 Fricker Street, adjacent to Central High School, wonderful for everyone that is except the poor old sports photographer. Why? No other reason than the quality of the lighting. The new facility is ‘environmentally friendly’ and the lighting remains low when empty  and when more people  fill the gym  the lighting increases but not to the point where it is bright enough for great sports photography.  Ice hockey rinks put there lights on ‘full beam’ for tournaments but not so at 90 Fricker Street. There is no manual over-ride to increase the brightness of the lights for competitions so we sports photographers need to use high ISO levels, degrading the quality of our images,  to obtain a fast enough shutter speed for sport. So, resigned to this fact I upgraded my camera body from an EOS 40D to an EOS 7D to shoot the RI Classic Track and Field Invitational meet on December 30th, 2009 (Well, I will use that as the excuse for buying a new body).Most of my shots were taken at ISO 3200  but as the day progressed that was too slow as my shutter speed dropped to 1/125th, so I pushed the ISO rating to 5000 and ‘wow’ was I surprised at the image quality on the Canon EOS 7D, used in combination with a 70mm-200mm L series f/2.8 IS lens, absolutely fantastic.

In the future, I need not fear the poor gym lighting and will comfortably operate at high ISO levels while using the 7D.

I have attached 3 photos from the meet  – without any post-processing,  straight out the camera -  and for those with a pixel fixation I have included a couple of 100% crops to depict the noise levels and provide a comparison between the EOS 7D and EOS 40D body. You will note all the greater level of noise in the 40D example which is why the Fricker Street gym worried me so much; and now, thanks to the EOS 7D, it is much, much, less of a problem. Phew!

EOS 7D ISO3200 example

EOS 7D ISO3200 example

Canon EOS 7D ISO5000 example

Canon EOS 7D ISO5000 example

Canon EOS 7D ISO3200 100% crop

Canon EOS 7D ISO3200 100% crop

The following 100% crop is smaller due to the EOS 40D producing 10MP images compared to the 18MP which is produced by the EOS 7D

Canon EOS 40D ISO3200 100% crop

Canon EOS 40D ISO3200 100% crop

Now this is impressive, this a 100% crop from an  Canon EOS 7D  @ ISO 5000. When this is compared to the above crop from the 40D you can see why I am so excited.

Canon EOS 7D ISO5000 at 100% crop

Canon EOS 7D ISO5000 at 100% crop

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