How to Shoot Outdoor Sports in Manual

[MrChip]

Hello,

The Little League season just started and multiple teams this year have all white jerseys. In years past I would shoot in AV mode. Now I am thinking about taking the plunge and going manual.

I just attended a class on using Lightroom (I am a brand new LR user) and the instructor pulled out a gray card. How helpful are these to set white balance and exposure for outdoor sports? Can someone recommend a specific card that is ideally under $50? I did some quick searching and see there are different % grays and one manufacturer claims that digital cameras need a different card than film cameras.

Not sure if this is relevant, but this year, thanks to my move to Lightroom, I am also changing and will shoot all my photos in RAW.

I will be shooting with a 7D and the 70-200 F2.8 and the 300F4 lenses.

Thanks for any advice and suggestions.

Chip

P.S. When I have more time tonight I will do some searching on techniques. If anyone can tell me how I would actually use the card, that would help. In other words, how do I adjust the WB using the card and when do I know I have it correct? Is it by looking at a histogram?

[robertwsimpson]

shoot in raw and set the white balance later. you can even point set the white balance with one of the jerseys. that would be the easiest way. I wouldn't mess with a gray card, personally.

if you want to shoot in manual, meter the scene, shoot a couple of test shots, figure out your settings, and just leave them. the lighting shouldn't change much unless it is cloudy.

[MrChip]

Robert,

You may have set the record for the fastest reply ever to one of my posts.

As you can see, I am somewhat new to using RAW. I take it I can change the WB later in LR with relative ease? What exactly do you mean by meter the scene? Are you referring to using a light meter like a Polaris SPD100? If yes, I do not own one and could use a recommendation on a unit that is easy to use and reasonably priced. If you mean something else, please explain.

[gonzogolf]

The nice thing about shooting manual is that barring some really unusual clouds passing, your shots will be more consistently exposed. This makes batch processing a lot easier. As for how shoot manual, its easy use your histogram and see where the white jersey's begin to blow out and then back off a little bit.

[MrChip]

Hi Gonzogolf,

How do you tell when the white jerseys blow out? Do you use the camera's highlight alert or do you look at the shape of the histogram? Do you use the single histogram or the three RGB histograms?

Thanks!

[robertwsimpson]

use the luminance histogram and make sure you enable highlight alert. shoot so that you have just a little bit of the blinkies and then you're pretty ok. that's what I do at least.

[gonzogolf]

Originally Posted by MrChip

Hi Gonzogolf,

How do you tell when the white jerseys blow out? Do you use the camera's highlight alert or do you look at the shape of the histogram? Do you use the single histogram or the three RGB histograms?

Thanks!

I would use the single histogram and just make sure that there are no spikes outside of the right side of the histogram. Its easy to practice just take a while sheet of paper and do some test shots. With white jerseys on a bright day (or a white sheet of paper) there will be a pretty obvious spike in the histogram just open up the exposure until that gets close to the right side.

[MrChip]

Thank you both so much! I need to sign off now but will use your suggestions tomorrow afternoon at a game.

[stover98074]

I shoot manual in gyms for volley ball and I rely heavily on the cameras LCD to get my setting correct. I make adjustments, take a sample shot and review the results on the LCD. Some people refer to this as Chimping. I then fine tune until I have the settings that work. When the result looks okay in the LCD I know I have decent settings. Like others have suggested, once I have the settings I tend to not adjust them – I suppose outside if the light changes dramatically you would rethink your settings.

There are three variables to manage for exposure, ISO, Speed and Aperture. In an ideal world I would go with the lowest ISO (in a gym that is about 1600), the fastest shutter speed (in a gym that is about 1/500) and a few stops below wide open on my lens (so for a fast 2.8 lens I would ideally like f4 or 5.6) I shoot wide open in a gym – if my lens goes to 2.0 then that is what I use. Outside in daylight you should be able have much more light so the above settings may be a moot point.

Sometimes I shoot in RAW and make adjustments in LR. Lately I am shooting JPEG and let the camera do the processing. I have a hundred plus images after a game and it is time consuming to do RAW post processing (I suppose you could batch process and cut the time). In either case, I set the camera to Auto White Balance.

[abruckse]

Originally Posted by stover98074

I shoot manual in gyms for volley ball and I rely heavily on the cameras LCD to get my setting correct. I make adjustments, take a sample shot and review the results on the LCD. Some people refer to this as Chimping. I then fine tune until I have the settings that work. When the result looks okay in the LCD I know I have decent settings. Like others have suggested, once I have the settings I tend to not adjust them – I suppose outside if the light changes dramatically you would rethink your settings.

There are three variables to manage for exposure, ISO, Speed and Aperture. In an ideal world I would go with the lowest ISO (in a gym that is about 1600), the fastest shutter speed (in a gym that is about 1/500) and a few stops below wide open on my lens (so for a fast 2.8 lens I would ideally like f4 or 5.6) I shoot wide open in a gym – if my lens goes to 2.0 then that is what I use. Outside in daylight you should be able have much more light so the above settings may be a moot point.

Sometimes I shoot in RAW and make adjustments in LR. Lately I am shooting JPEG and let the camera do the processing. I have a hundred plus images after a game and it is time consuming to do RAW post processing (I suppose you could batch process and cut the time). In either case, I set the camera to Auto White Balance.

Why would you stop down in an ideal world? I don't have a whole lot of field sport experience, but it seems like subject-background separation, thus narrow DOF would be very important.

As far as using the LCD, I wouldn't trust that alone. Viewing angle, glare, variation in brightness settings, etc. could make that image look very different on the LCD in different places, which is probably why most use the histogram.

[clarence]

Originally Posted by abruckse

Why would you stop down in an ideal world? I don't have a whole lot of field sport experience, but it seems like subject-background separation, thus narrow DOF would be very important.

Lenses aren't usually sharpest at wide-open apertures.

So if you have plenty of light to work with (e.g., outdoor sports instead of gyms), stopping down gives you more depth of field at the subject, so missed focus isn't as critical. Sometimes you want more than a 6" DoF... especially if you want to capture a second subject (e.g., a defender) in focus in the scene.

In addition to wide apertures, background separation can also be maintained by decreasing the distance between you and the subject, and composing to maintain sufficient distance between the subject and the background.

That said, I usually shoot wide open.

[stover98074]

I shoot wide open and enjoy the shallow DOF - I also shoot with Manual Focus Lenses - I do not have any AF lenses. So anything I can do to assist with focus helps...

Histograms are great - but it is easier for me to look at the actual results on my LCD and go from there - just a personal preference. I guess the OP has a few options on how to obtain exposure.

[Noitca]

Does anyone find that shooting sporting stuff in manual is superior to shooting in Tv?

I try to get young kids (5 year olds) sports. I use a T1i with either the Canon 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS or the Canon 55-250 f/4-5.6 IS. I usually end up with the longer lens due to distance to subject. I use Tv setting and let the camera deal with aperture and iso.

Every time I get in manual mode and shoot there for a while, I end up forgetting to update the settings when something changes or don't realize that something changed enough and end up with dark/light photos that are nearly un-usable.

If done right, is manual superior to Tv?

Thanks.

[snyderman]

Good advice, so far. Here are a couple more to confuse the issue even further:

1. Yes, by all means, buy a WhiBal card for around $20. Hang it on a kid on the field where you'll be shooting. Take a snap of the WhiBal card in good light. Use this to correct WB on all your RAW files after shooting a game.

2. White uniforms and not overexposing. The idea about looking for the blinkies on the viewfinder is good. Just a tad should be ok. Check your histogram to make sure no lines going up the right side. Remember, if you shoot RAW files, you'll be able to recover some of the blowouts in post process.

3. More on white uniforms. You have a couple of options. a) exposes for faces and risk blown out white jerseys and pants. Expose for white uniforms and see strong shadows on kids faces. There really isn't any 'magic bullet' setting that's going to get perfect exposures of white uniforms and kids' faces.

4. I would choose AV setting. Say you chose the 300 f/4 lens. Set it to f/4 and on a sunny day (at ISO 400) you should be seeing shutter speeds of 1/800 - 1/1600 or plenty fast enough for Little League aged kids. Manual works until you start moving around, then it's constant rechecking of settings. When shooting sports it's best to find a 'set-it-and-forget-it' setting and concentrate on the action.

dave

[tracknut]

Originally Posted by Noitca

Does anyone find that shooting sporting stuff in manual is superior to shooting in Tv?
...
If done right, is manual superior to Tv?

Thanks.

I think virtually anyone shooting sports seriously will tell you that Manual is better than Tv, and about 90% would tell you that Av is also better than Tv. The two semi-automatic settings are pretty handy if light is changing a lot, though, so if that's your scenario, then I would check out Av.

Dave