Canada Day Tournament Photos

I don’t normally see posts about people explaining their thought process while taking photos so I figured this would be an interesting thing to write about.

I took about 300+ photos throughout the weekend and, while I would’ve liked to have taken more photos of our team, I’m pretty satisfied with quite a number of my photos. I wouldn’t say that all of them are spectacular (there’s a whole bunch of out of focus ones) but there are ones that definitely stand out.

RAW vs. JPG

One of the main changes I made from last year is shooting RAW instead of JPG. It gives me a chance to fix whatever I need to in post-processing, whether it be something as simple as white balance or adjusting curves. My only concern with using RAW is the possibility that I could run out of space in a 2- or 3-day tournament, depending on how many photos or videos I choose to take. I currently have a 16gb, an 8gb, and a 4gb card at my disposal so it should be enough as long as I don’t go crazy with video. RAW isn’t as fast either in terms of continuous shooting but since I only take one or two shots at a time, it didn’t really cause any problems for me.

Lens

Another change from last year is the lens. I basically used the Canon 50mm lens for all my shots this weekend. Since it’s a fixed lens, I can’t zoom in nor can I zoom out. This poses more of a problem indoors than it does outdoors. When I’m outdoors, I can walk around anywhere outside the court without having to worry about stepping onto another court. On the other hand, when I’m indoors, if I try taking a few steps back from the sidelines, I’m basically going into the next court. It’s something I will have to learn how to adjust to since the major tournament is indoors.

Focusing

In addition to being limited in space while indoors, I also had a few issues with focusing. I use back button focusing so this allows me to continuously focus while taking the photo. The problem with this is that the camera sometimes focuses away from the subject and I get stuck with an out of focus (OOF) photo. I think I need to work on tracking the players better and experimenting with holding down the focus button the entire time or pre-focusing on a specific player prior to the shot. I also used a shallower depth of field in my indoor photos (f/3.2 or larger aperture) so I need to be more precise with the focusing. My main problem is that I want to capture absolutely EVERY play but the reality of it is that I can’t. I need to just focus on one player or a certain area and then go from there. It seems like it’d be extremely difficult to go from trying to take a photo of a block directly to one of the back row players making a dig. I’m sure it’s doable with a fast enough lens and being super quick with the camera but I don’t know how many good shots you’d be able to get from doing that all the time.

Settings

My settings for indoors were usually: f/3.2-4.0, ISO 3200/6400, and aperture priority mode. ISO6400 on the T1i is on the grainy side but I’d much rather have a grainy photo than a blurry photo. The shutter settings typically ranged from 1/200 to 1/400 with 1/200 being on the slow end for capturing ball movement. With some of my indoor shots, quite a number of them didn’t have fast enough shutter speeds to freeze the movement of the ball or the players. For the major or any other indoor tournaments, I’m definitely going to try to have my min. shutter speed be 1/320 or faster.

My settings for outdoors were usually: f/5-10, ISO 100/200, and aperture priority mode. Since the sun was basically out the entire weekend, lighting wasn’t an issue unless I was shooting with the sun in my face, something I shouldn’t be doing anyways.

Shooting (in general)

The best shots, in my opinion, are the ones that capture the emotions of the moment and the ones where the ball makes contact with the player (slightly before or slightly after works well too). I will typically try to go for the latter but I’m working on capturing more of the former. Ideally, I’d like to be able to capture both in the same photo but the moment would have to be perfect. Ex: someone making an awesome dig while having the crowd look at it in amazement.

In terms of shooting location, I found that shooting from the end line and behind the up/down ref worked best for me for attacks and passing, respectively.

Conclusion

All in all, I’m generally pleased with the shots I took but there’s always room for improvement. I definitely want to try and reduce the number of OOF shots as well as trying to capture more emotion in my photos. Any comments on the photos below or on the photos I posted on Facebook would be much appreciated. =)

Photos

Some of the better shots I got this weekend with comments:

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1. This was taken with the 18-55mm IS kit lens.
2. The focus looks to be slightly behind the Tigers’ front row and not focused on #11. I like the timing of the shot.
3. I think I focused on the Tigers’ front row at f/5.0.
4. Could’ve been better if I froze the movement of the ball but, other than that, the photo turned out well.
5. Not in focus. I thought I pre-focused on the other team’s blocker but I guess not.
6. Good timing with the shot.
7. Probably one of my favourite shots. Liked all the hands in the photo and the general happy feeling in the photo.
8. Liked the look of the crowd and the ball on the passer’s arms.
9. I’m pretty sure the ball went straight down.