Indoor Sports Photography

Many of you will instantly recognise Magnus' (Swede66) icehockey shots on Dyxum. Magnus has perfected the art of indoor sports photography in challenging environments, and in thei article, he shares a few of his "trade secrets". Please enjoy the read and feel free to ask questions - that way we all learn! Many thanks for the article Magnus. Cheers, Frank

Introduction   

I have always been interested in sports. From the age of 6 I have played football (soccer), baseball, cross country skiing, hockey, golf, bandy and floorball in organized leagues. I have also tried speedskating, slalom, curling, bowling and tennis.

Now, having photography as main hobby I have tried to combine my interest for sports with my photography. I try to see my son play football and tennis regularly and I always bring my camera bag. During winter I’m fortunate to be one of the appointed game photographers for our local bandy team which plays in the 2nd highest division and also have a rinkside badge to Allsvenskan, which is the 2nd highest hockeyleague in Sweden. I haven’t tried to shoot another team than my favourite team Leksand though but I’m tempted to try an away game some day soon.

My bandy shots are mostly used on the team website and my hockey shots are used for various publications but also sold.

Ramblings you think, not really, my point with this introduction is, that having played a certain sport is a huge advantage and makes it easier to get the shots you want, that stands out from the others. To know where the action is gonna happen is critical to get the good shots. Trying to follow the game only will make you trigger the shutter a fraction to late and miss the key moments instead of anticipating situations and trusting your instincts.

In this article I’m going to concentrate on shooting indoors. I hope that you will find this interesting.

The gear:   
Cameras:     A77 and a700 A77. The a77 is the main camera for its high frame rate, focus and tracking capabilities
     
Lenses:      Sony 70-200 2,8G, CZ 24-70 2,8, Minolta 300 4G and Sigma 10-20
I mainly use the 70-200 but the other lenses also see some use in certain situations.

I never use a tripod or monopod at indoor venues as they are useless in what I do but at more static sports I can see it could be of use, especially when trying to get specific situations in a game like a tennis/volleyballplayer serving in low light etc.

Bring everything you got in memory cards!!!

The Settings:
I always shoot in manual but use auto white balance. Typically I have the following settings:

     A77     F 2,8-3,5 and ISO 1000 to get speeds at 1/ 250-350. I haven’t really shot that much with this camera so there’s still much to learn and up till now I’m still experimenting between AF-S and AF-C. Finally I don’t use the 12 fps mode but rather the 10 fps mode and shoot bursts of 3-6 shots
     
     A700     F 2,8-3,5 and ISO 800 to get speeds at 1/250-350. I only use the AF-S since the AF-C is to slow on the a700 and shoot bursts of 3-5 shots.

Finding the right settings can be tricky since the light varies at indoor arenas. Always be at the venue in time for the warmup which is the perfect opportunity to find the right settings.


During the game I always try to aim at the faces of the players as different colored jerseys etc can fool the metering if you don’t shoot in manual. Another advantage of aiming at faces is that, IMHO, a face in the adds so much more to the picture. A sports photo without a face is less interesting. Of course there are exceptions to this but in most cases you need to get a face in the frame. Some players have very funny or “speaking” facial expressions when skating or shooting and if you get those in the picture you have a keeper.

I also try to decide beforehand what I want from the game, is there a special player I want to follow, do I want to experiment with motion-blur or do I just want to get as many good action shots as possible. Lately I have tried to get at least some wideangle shots from every game, if you do it right, you get a very different and interesting shot. For these shots the a700 gets to see some action and is very dependable.

I would like to go back to the gear. When shooting indoor sports you need good lenses with large aperture capabilities like my Sony 70-200 2,8 or lenses like the Minolta 200 2,8G or 300 2,8G. For fast paced sports it’s also very useful to have high speed focussing lenses like the Sony SSM or Minolta HS lenses. There are other 70-200 2,8 lenses on the market but I have only tried an old Sigma which wasn’t very good and the Minolta 80-200 HS 2,8G that was almost as good as the Sony I’ve got now. You can of course use less specialized lenses for shooting sports but it will be harder and you will have to compromise as less light will hit the sensor. If you don’t want crank up your ISO you can actually turn this into an advantage and add another element into you shots. I talk about motion blur which is a great effect in sports photography, it takes a lot of practising but it adds so much if done correctly. Otherwise, look for situations where players are slow enough to get a decent shot, know the limitations of your equipment and wait for the right moment.

Post processing:

I always shoot in RAW. During my first screening in Adobe Bridge, I delete everything without a face, that’s not sharp, shots with cut legs/sticks/heads or just boring pictures. Be hard on yourself here or you will end up with lots of similar shots. That’s nothing but a waste of space. In Camera Raw I adjust white balance if necessary then exposure. In Photoshop I crop if needed, use levels to get the black really black, adds a little color and finally adjust brightness. Sometimes I need to remove some noise, especially after shooting on higher ISO in smaller arenas but that’s it! Remember when editing high ISO shots that you must be careful when sharpening as you will also increase visible noise. Reducing the size also reduces the noise after sharpening can be applied with caution!

I have probably forgotten something but feel free to post any question you may have and I will try to answer with the best of my knowledge. Thanks for reading and I hope you have learnt something.

Some Results:

Static moment in the game


Wide Angle shot


Making it just a little more interesting with motion blur


Facial expressions




Peak action

Hi Jim - yes you are correct, the A77 shoots at 12, 8 and 3 FPS in the various modes.

I agree that Magnus is fortunate to have good lighting for these games, affording him the luxury of higher shutter speeds at moderate ISO. In a way, shooting pro games is easier than amateur indoor sport because the lighting is so much better in the former.

Jim, what sort of shutter speeds and ISO are you shooting when your aperture is f2.2?

Cheers, Frank

revdocjim wrote: The other issue with gym lighting is that it cycles through all the colors 60 times a second so with fast shutter speeds the colors will vary widely from frame to frame. This makes for a lot of work in PP to get consistent colors in the final product.

I didn't realize this but it is very handy to know.

Very comprehensive, Magnus. TFS

Great article Impressive shots with those shutterspeeds.

Just a question.. Why shoot on manual and not shutterspeed preference?
As I shoot soccergames of my sons my preference settings are auto WB but also auto Iso but with the shutter fixed on 1/500 or something around that.
Or probably it is a silly question because most likely I already know the answer... in the icehall the light probably remains the same while outside with the soccer it is constantly changing. On manual I had or overexposed or underexposed pictures with sun on and off and I was constantly switching settings but on S - with auto iso it was more or less balanced.

@Jetsplace. You're right, the light changes not very much through the areas I cover with my 70-200 in the arena. If I want to shoot something off the ice I just change to aperture priority. During summer I also shoot some soccer and I use aperture priority most of the times.

@madtownkeith, I'm still experimenting a little about what autofocus to use. So far, center focus point works best but to get closer without cropping to much I would like to learn to use the zone AF function better. It's very easy to use the centerpoint AF though, then crop the uninteresting parts made possible by the high resolution results the a77 produce.

I use the shutter and the continous AF works really well so I rarely use single shot AF during a game.

Those shots are nice a crisp. I just posted a question asking for some help on this type of sports shooting. I seemed to have gotten some slightly soft shots while at an indoor roller derby event. I was using the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 with aperture at 2.8 ISO anywhere around 800-1250 depending on shots and zoom range. Single point auto focus continuous mode. All pics were a bit soft and not sharp. I mean they weren't bad but i would not certainly be happy if i was gettting paid.
Not sure if it was the lens or what. I have gotten great results at outdoor soccer games with this camera lens combo (A77 and Tammy).