What Settings For Track Meet?

[RbrtPtikLeoSeny]

Hello, I'm going to be shooting my little brothers track meet with my brand new 20D tomorrow. I'm guessing I should shoot in Tv mode, and I'll be using my 50mm f/1.8 (Horrible choice I know... my 70-200 f/4L wont be in till the end of the week) but anyway, I'm a total noob and I'm just wondering what some good settings may be?

Hopefully it's a sunny day, so, white balance on the sun thing? What apeture? What's a good shutter speed for lil kids running, and jumping around? Stuff like that. THanks for any help!:lol:

[blinking8s]

Av, and you will want to use the 70-200 often, AF is much better on it than the 50 1.8, I like to open my aperture for track, with my 70-200 I shoot at f4 90% of the time for sports...

the longer focal length with make things feel tight/compressed...a head on shot at 200 of the runner will look cool

I have a few track and field photos in my photoblog, and I know gmen posted some awesome long jump shots.

Triple jump is very hard to shoot and getting a good angle on pole vault is hard for me...I liked to shoot track from the outside corners where it goes into the turn and straight on from the finish line...

[RbrtPtikLeoSeny]

Great thanks!!! I"ll try the f/4 tomorrow! After tomorrow I'll never use the 50 for sports again. I just have too tomorrow because my 70-200 hasn't come in yet. :-(

[RbrtPtikLeoSeny]

Blinkings.... your shots are awesome! Just took a look at quite a few of them, and I really like your work. Great stuff!

[grego]

AV or Manual. To be honest, Manual is better, once you get more practice. Because depending on what part of the body you meter, the reading might not be fully accurate(a black surface vrs a white surface will change your settings).

On Manual you can force it to stay at your particular aperture and shutter.

[gmen]

I shan't pretend to be an expert as I have only shot one track meet so far - however, I agree with the approach that blinking8s outlines... you might find you have greater success when you have that longer glass in your hands. Crank your lens out to 200mm and keep it there, open your aperture up all the way, keep an eye on the backgrounds (there will be all manner of distracting stuff scattered around an athletics stadium), make sure you can see the faces of the competitors, watch your exposure settings closely and fire away! Then it's a case of working on your timing to capture the peak action.

If you are going to be shooting with the 50mm, you'll need to position yourself as close as possible to the action. Just try to avoid upsetting the officials and/or the competitors if you get too close! Another reason to use a longer lens!

I've posted a few pics from my recent athletics shoot here, feel free to take a look if you've nothing better to do:

Long Jump - http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=73728
High Jump - http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=73572
Running - http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=73740

I hope that helps a little and have fun shooting it - there's plenty of varied action to capture!

[blinking8s]

i never get to shoot outside, its not fair! hehe....

gmen always gives better advice than me :) i guess im not longwinded enough to go into detail...

check this for some extra settings info...
http://siphoto.com/?canon20D.inc

Manual is cool too, prefocus for things like highjump where objects can distract or are having trouble tracking...but on the 20d if you have * set to focus, holding the shutter halfway down acts as the lock, so AV wont be changing at that point in the shot, now if you are panning or something naturally you want to be on manual...but if you learn to control Av at its extent I find its much like manual, just less adjusting for me when I move sides of the basketball court or something...

[grego]

As far as what's a desirable shutter, with AV, if you use that, atleast get 1/1000 and you are good to go. The bigger your aperture, the faster you'll get of course. That's what makes AV so valuable. It's a good one to learn off of. But once you get the hang of it, play around with manual exposure, because it can be very powerful, once you learn to use it right.

I was kinda forced, because I photograph some teams with black jerseys and AV gives me 1/300, 1/400 on their black jersey, but if you have a metering on the ground or their skin it jumps to 1/1000, 1/2000, etc. That's where you'll see Manual as the way to go in some situations.