Tonight's League 2 Soccer

I'm up at Chester on Tuesday night, do they still have those lovely cheerleaders?

Sir Vic Alsmear wrote in post #2380264
I'm up at Chester on Tuesday night, do they still have those lovely cheerleaders?

Sadly not a sign of any cheerleaders when I was there. More's the pity!!

I might be there too, not quite sure yet - if I am I will drop you a line beforehand.

Wow Paul I have Tried the same settings and my pictures are not coming out this good. What am I doing wrong? What is the percentage of good pictures you are getting at each game? How are you getting the play frozen at them shutter speeds? Our city has just bulit an indoor soccer areana. I am very frustrated with the output of my pictures. I need some help. I have been shooting in M mode with ISO at 1600 or H depending on lighting. My shuttler speed has been set for 250 - 500 I have my Af on ALServo Mode and My aperture at 1.8 I have tried costom white balances to help ajust the diffrence in indoor lighting. And I have tried just using AWB.The lighting is not my problem it is that My shots are not focus and it either focus on the people behind the players or the one closest to the camera or just everything Burry I have my metering mode set on center-weighted average metering I have tried the Evaluative metering to still no good.I took 400 shots last night and I was maybe happy with 20 that is not good percentage. I have tried TV mode and Av mode the sports mode is the worst. My equiment is

Canon 30D
Lenses is Canon EF 85mm 1.8

I have also the 580 Ex Speed lite that I have just bought to try and help because lighting at these speeds is not a problem but to increase my shutter speed to get a frozen shot I will have to turn down my ISO or even my Aperture or if not both right. So I thought if I had the speed lite this would help for the lack of both. Is this right thinking? I haven't tried the speed lite yet thought I would get some advice from experts. I have looked at the speed lite and it seems to be evan harder for me to understand. Please help

I also have

Canon EFS 18-55mm
Canon EF 50mm f1.8
Canon Ef 100 - 400mm f4.5 -5.6 L IS USM
Canons Shoe Cord for Speed Lite

Thank you for the Wow – glad you liked the pics.

Difficult to pin down specifics as to what you are doing wrong/right with your pics without seeing one – so feel free to post one up here!

I tend not to do a lot of shooting indoors – so may not be the best person to give advice on specifics of indoor shooting. Would suggest at looking at some of the posts on Basketball and Volleyball for the technical side of things that the shooters use. Volleybrad has some great shots if my memory serves me right (Lisa or Liza does as well I think…….apologies to anyone who I have missed, its been a while since any of the volleyball shots have been posted – I guess its out of season?).

For my keeper rate – post number 3 here covers that off in detail, but 55% of the shots I took on that evening were “keepers” – by that I mean ones that I could use for either stock or were submitted to the paper. This was out of 213 shots that were taken in total. It was the first football that I had shot for a while, so my timing was off too, I would expect a keeper rate these days of around 60% plus.

The settings you are using are fundamentally correct – indoors or outside under lights I find manual is the best setting – the light should be reasonably consistent across the playing area, so therefore manual works as you can set the exposure and leave it. Av is another option, however the dark backgrounds that you face will leave yourself open to the metering being fooled and setting too lower a shutterspeed and therefore making you susceptible to motion blur.

Also by using manual, the metering mode that you use becomes irrelevant. Use the metering as an initial guide, take a few test shots and tweak things from there. On the bright side, once you nail the settings down that you need for a venue then you will find that unless they change something at the arena then you can just use those settings again and again.

For what its worth, when I do shoot in Av mode, I use evaluative metering mode and 99% of the times am happy with the result.

Focus mode you’ve chosen is correct, I would suggest though that part of the issue you have is the 1.8 aperture of the 85mm…..shooting at 1.8 will give you the most minimal Depth of Field and therefore your margin of error with focussing is much less. I’m not familiar with the 30d and its settings, however try just using the centre focus point. The only suggestion that I have for this is to practice and then practice some more. You may find it easier to use Custom function 4 and use the * button on the back of the camera to focus with. I personally don’t like this, however I know a great many people on here do and get some brilliant results with it.

White balance – I find that AWB gives good results most of the time, have never really had a problem with it (apart from sometimes when its very overcast). If you’re finding WB an issue then try shooting in RAW for a while – you can tweak the White balance settings when you convert the RAW file. This is how I learnt about White Balance – playing around with the settings in there as well as trying your own custom white balances in camera too. The luxury of RAW is that you can set your Custom White Balance, however know you have the backup of being able to override your setting when you convert the pic.

As for flash, I’m not the biggest fan of using flash for sports events unless its as fill in flash ?(for example when photographying mountain biking) – I would suggest reading the section on flash photography in Gmen’s Sports Q&Athread....in fact read the whole Q&A thread, there are some great tips that hugely helped me.

Hope that some of this helps – I think you are on the right lines – just keep practicing and you will find that the keeper % starts to rise quickly.

Good luck!

The field is about the same size as basketball court. And I have tried positioning myself behind the goal so the action can come towards me. The issue I am having their is they have safety type glass all around the outside and the pictures are not as clear in the clarity of the picture I tried using a polarized filter to see if this made it any better then it was just taking it to long to focus for the next shot. I have been known to have sequence shoots that my parents really seem to enjoy. So I have been trying to stay with the same style that everyone seems to enjoy. I have a feeling that for indoor I am just going to have to wait for the last shoot to get the ones that really stand out.
I am using my 85mm f1.8 lens right now and have yet to be happy with most of the shots. I feel the 85mm is giving me to much zoom for the last shot by the time they get up to shot I am entirely to close to the play and then I miss it. I have tried positioning myself above the net , that did not work to much net in the picture. I have place myself in the the box with the players this is where their is no glass but I have a bad angle to shot from. Behind the glass is where I really liked the position but then I have the focus issue. And really bad pictures from this safety glass. I bought the the 50mm f1.8 Lens hoping this would give me this advantage in the players box but it did not do any better. Has anybody been successful in shooting indoor soccer?

Your pictures look great them I would be proud of.

I really need help The owner of the place has ask if I would submit some photos to be published in the Goal Indoor Magazine. And with what I have done so far I am not happy with. My big Issue is the Focusing problem I am having. I was unable to get their last night to try the new setting I am hoping will help.
Using the * button. To stay focus. I have accepted the fact that I will be unable to track a player and that I will need to just wait for the final shot. But I still would like to get My Camera to take at least up to 3 focus shots in case I have misjudged the play and the direction of the play changes.
And I have been unable to use my monopod in the players box where their is no glass since it is not tall enough to get the camera over the wall.
Buying a Bigger Lens at this time is not an option for me but believe me I have been looking and wishing I could. Please keep the advise coming I will try anything. After this dead line I have been asked to shoot action shots for the Indoor Soccer tournament, in February

Here is a picture behind the glass I am actually embarrassed to show it but I want everyone to see the issues I am dealing with and here is one in the players box neither of them are to my liking but if it will help then I will show

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I have a question for other sports shooter which is probably not soccer specific, however I have soccer in mind when I ask it.......if shooting for a paper/agency where coverage of both teams is needed, where do you sit in either half and how do you ensure both sides get an appropriate amount of coverage?[/QUOTE]


Great pics as usual. This may seem a little green, but, is it possible to work the touchlines? Or work with someone at either end?

If it's required that both teams are covered then typically one of us will take an end each. At least thats how is works for me.

Not normally, you should stay put. That said I have seen a few togs jump up to get a decent shot of a cele that runs away from them.

If I am covering both sides I'd pick a spot and stay there for the entire game. I usually (although I have been trying new places) sit on the side line close to the edge of the 18yd box. This way I can cover one side attacking and also both goal mouths. One will need cropping however, but it's better than nothing.

Darren

bildeb0rg wrote in post #2405282
I have a question for other sports shooter which is probably not soccer specific, however I have soccer in mind when I ask it.......if shooting for a paper/agency where coverage of both teams is needed, where do you sit in either half and how do you ensure both sides get an appropriate amount of coverage?

Great pics as usual. This may seem a little green, but, is it possible to work the touchlines? Or work with someone at either end?

Thanks for the comment - for me, I am with DarrenL - I will stay put for the duration of the game - only moving if one team or another is getting absolutely hammered and I need to start to look for shots.

Re: the green comment, these came up ok in the paper and likewise on my screen.........

My bad, I meant is this me being a bit green (naive/stupid/inexperi​enced). Colours are geat.