Shooting sports: high adrenaline and higher ISO

I had a chance to get involved in some sports photography last couple of weekends. I was helping Armando Tura, who shoots regularly for the University of Victoria VIKES. We started with field hockey and rugby, trying out Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM and a rather monstrous 300mm f/2.8L IS USM lenses as well as a 5D Mark III body, all of which Armando was kind enough to lend me, along with about 10 years worth of his own experience. It was quite exciting to feel the adrenaline-charged atmosphere of the game and, as a photographer, to operate in a drastically different regime from my usual travel- and portrait-style of shooting (equipment-wise, I typically use a 5D Mark II with a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens).

It was at a basketball game the following weekend where I was really pushed out of my comfort zone. The ISO range that I had to push my camera to was mind-boggling to me. Note: a 5D Mark II at the auto ISO setting (“A”) only goes to 3200. One can dial in 6400 manually, or go to “H1”, which is in the expanded range and corresponds to ISO 12800 (sic). If you’ve been shooting mainly portraits and landscapes before, the grain would look horrible to you (as it did to me). It can be somewhat corrected in post-processing (I am using Lightroom 4) though. Most importantly, you’d have to embrace the fact that, in sports photography, “grain is good”.

After the basketball, which was by far the most challenging action I ever shot (with a possible exception of a horse race at dusk at the Palio di Siena), a swimming competition was relatively easy. The action is considerably slower, and the paths of the athletes are more predictable. Photographing swimming events has it’s own challenges, though. Mainly, the vantage points at the side of the pool are limited, and the flashes cannot be used, because they interfere with the metering equipment used by the event officials. A final note: keep your camera warm and in the bag before entering the pool area, otherwise the high humidity will cause the lens to fog up.

See more photos from these events here.