How I Shoot High School Football
27 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
Every now and then I get a question asking how to go about shooting a high school football game. There really isn’t one totally correct answer to this question but I’ll try to cover how I think things through and some of the settings and equipment that I use.
Equipment:
For me it all starts with equipment. High school fields are not, as a general rule, the best lit facilities and most games in the fall are played after sunset so light gathering capabilities are at a premium.
There are two ways that you can deal with this, the first is by using an off-camera flash such as a Canon Speedlite (most of my references will be to Canon equipment because that is what I use). This will allow you to add additional light into a scene and it gives you the ability to fully light a players face. I’ve played with this a couple of times but to be honest, I’m not entirely comfortable with it. My major concern is at some point, I’m going to hit the flash and distract a player. Now this may be an irrational fear. I’ve talked to various High School players and they tell me that they don’t even notice the camera flash. My fear then if probably just me thinking I’m more important to a situation than I really am. Still though on the off chance that an opposing player wants to use it as an excuse for dropping a pass or heaven forbid, it actually does impact a play, I can’t bring myself to use flash at high school sporting events. My other reasons for not using flash is more technical and esthetic. First I don’t prefer the uneven lighting that I was getting and the glow in the eyes. I’m sure that I could edit both of these out for my images but I just haven’t experimented enough. My second technical reason is flash recycle times. I currently shoot with a Canon 7D which is capable of 8 frames per second. My Speedlite isn’t capable of keeping up with that speed so if I am shooting a receiver hauling in a pass, I might get light on my first frame and then not get anything until my fifth frame. Since I like to shoot in an action sequence, this doesn’t really work for my shooting style. I know that there are photographers that have great success shooting with flash and I love their work, it just isn’t something I am comfortable doing.
So if I don’t use flash, how do I shoot high school football under the lights? For me it starts with a fast lens and a camera that has what in the past, was considered high ISO capability(my ISO range during a game can run from 800 at kickoff to 12,800 in the endzone late in the game, 4 full stops). The lens I am currently using is a 70 – 200mm Sigma f2.8. The 70 – 200mm gives me enough reach to get all the way across the field while the aperture of f2.8 allows enough light into the sensor that I can keep my shutter speeds up where I want them. If you are using a kit lens that comes with your DSLR then you typically have a maximum aperture of f4.0 or 5.6 so the shutter speeds of 1/500 that I typically shoot with becomes 1/250 or 1/125 which isn’t fast enough to stop all motion in either case. (NOTE: One thing that I am assuming here is that you are shooting with a DSLR, point and shoots won’t cut it in most cases.) One last lens consideration is Image Stabilization (VR in Nikon product). There are debates back and forth as to how much this feature will help you with football. Once school of thought is that if you are shooting at 1/500 shutter speeds than the IS/VR features really won’t help you and may through an in focus image out of focus. The second school of thought is that with a longer lens, you will invariably have a small amount of shake as you hold the camera and that the IS/VR will overcome this shake. To this point, I have not shot with an IS/VR lens during a football game. I did use one for a portrait session and loved it for that however.
My Settings:
Again, what I use is not the only way to shoot a game, there are probably as many correct techniques as there are photographers. As I mentioned above, my equipment consists of a Canon 7D with a Sigma 70 – 200mm f2.8 non IS/VR lens. I utilize UDMA 6 compact flash cards that store 8GB. I could go with larger cards but the 8GB cards tend to give me 260 – 300 images per card so with my complement of 4 cards I am pretty well set. I have looked at 16GB cards but to be honest, I never seem to have the money to pull the trigger on one of those while I can almost always afford to throw another 8GB card into my pack.
So, which camera mode do I shoot in? Personally I choose Tv (Shutter Priority) on my Canon system. This allows me to set my preferred shutter speed of 1/500 and allows the camera to change the aperture based on the available light. Depending upon when kickoff of the game is I will usually start with my ISO set at 800 and then move that steadily upwards as the game progresses. By the time the game finishes, I have found recently at the Millington High School field that ISO 4000 tends to be my sweet spot. For shots where I am in the endzone shooting back at plays near the goal line I will bump this up to ISO 6400 and ISO 12,800 depending upon my what I am seeing in my images. (My one wish would be for a set of lights near the goal line so that endzones aren’t so dark.) As I mentioned before, my Canon 7D is capable of shooting at 8 frames per second so I like to take full advantage of that and shoot in the highest setting. A lot of times this will help me capture a shot where the ball is right on a players fingertips or a hand is pulling a facemask that I wouldn’t ordinarily get if I were not shooting with high speed.
One setting that I am still experimenting with and I will occasionally change during the game is the exposure meter. On the 7D I have the option of a spot meter, a full frame meter, and two center weighted features. Predominately I will use the spot meter but this can get me into trouble exposure wise if I am focusing on a white jersey or a black jersey. At times like that I will move to one of the center-weighted meters to help me balance out an overly dark or overly light shot.
For autofocus settings I am fortunate that the 7D has a very good tracking system. I set my autofocus on servo which will continually adjust the focus of an object as it moves. I also go into the customer functions an tweak some settings so that the tracking changes quickly. With the 7D (and other Canon models for that matter) I can adjust the sensitivity of the autofocus system so that if something quickly moves into the frame the autofocus will either quickly adjust or slowly adjust. I prefer to go with the quickly adjust myself as I tend to change where I am focusing rapidly depending upon how a play develops. For instance, if a quarterback is dropping back to pass I may start the play focusing on him but quickly pick up the intended receiver once the pass is thrown. I want to be able to focus the first shot, not the second or third shot when I swing the camera.
Another setting that I make sure is set is the type of format I am recording images in. Again, most DSLR’s give you the opportunity to shoot in JPEG or in what is called RAW. RAW format is essentially what the camera sees while a JPEG is what the camera gives you after it automatically corrects for exposure, white balance, noise and other factors. JPEG has advantages in that they are smaller file sizes and in my camera I can shoot burst of well over 121 images before I fill up the camera buffer. What I give up though is editing control. I personally like to be able to tweak my white balance, my exposure levels and noise levels on my own in Photoshop Lightroom. If I let the camera make those decisions, I don’t have as much control after the fact due to fact that a JPEG is a compressed file so not all of the original information is there. In my camera a JPEG is roughly 2MB file size while my RAW files can run up to 22MP. The downside for me is that because the file size is so much larger, I go through more hard disk, more compact flash and I fill my camera buffer up much quicker so I can only get 14 – 16 shots off before I have to wait on the camera.
The final setting that I use is a trick I have learned from a few photography blogs and that is back button focusing. When you pull your camera out of the box, pushing the shutter button down 1/2 way will focus on a subject as well as set your exposure for the image. When you push the button the rest of the way down, an image is made. Back button focusing moves this feature of 1/2 way down off of the shutter button and moves it to one of the buttons on the back of the camera. On the 7D I move it to the button AF-ON. What this allows me to do is continually keep my focus moving while the shutter button is fully depressed. If I were to leave it on the shutter button, and fired a 14 image burst, the subject may start out in focus but because I never take my finger off the shutter and refocus (i.e. push the shutter 1/2 way down) I am still focusing where the player was 2 – 3 seconds ago and may not have him in focus any longer. With back button focus that same player is continually tracked while I am continually shooting.
Other odds and ends:
Positioning is another area where I tend to be a bit different than other high school football photographers. I like to shoot from my knees. It can cause some difficulties from time to time as officials tend to move in front of my regularly and I get blocked out from time to time but I simply like that angles that it produces. To me it is more representative of being in the action. Again, this is a personal preference. There are photographers who shoot standing up and I love their work too. This is just what works for me. Something that I just added last week and I think I am going to keep in the next few weeks is a monopod. This gives me a bit more camera stability when I am lower to the ground and I felt added to the shot quality but more importantly helped eliminate camera shake when I was shooting video.
The last thing is where do I set up to shoot. This all depends on the type of shot that I want and a bit on intuition. No matter how hard a team tries, there are occasionally subtle tip offs as to what play is going to be run (ok sometimes they aren’t so subtle). One team a few years ago, I picked up that line splits shifted depending on where they were going to run. I almost always knew where the ball was going. Most of the time it isn’t that easy and quite often on my guessing, I am wrong. Still, if it is 3rd and long, I might guess a pass and move downfield more than if I think it is going to be a run.
Conclusion:
In the end it comes down to knowing your equipment, knowing the game and experimenting. I have been shooting high school football for only 3 years so I have a lot to learn and I am still trying new things every week. Obviously I don’t just go in and try something new for an entire game. Even last week when I broke the monopod out for the game, I didn’t use it on all my shots until I felt comfortable with it and I knew it was going to work.
Remember, this is just an overview of what I do, it isn’t right and it isn’t wrong, it is me. If you have questions, feel free to drop me an email at arrick@boxfirephotography.com and I’ll be glad to talk to you and see if I can help out.
