tomcat

I had a conversation this morning with a photographer friend of mine, a young mom, that is struggling with teenagers, covid-19 quarantine, aging parents. I am helping her learn sports photography at her high school so that she can take their indoor sports pictures instead of me. I have no plans to enter a gym. She's struggling with trying to learn how to anticipate the action and focus on the players (her daughter plays, but the mom says all she has done in the past is just "watch" the game and has no understanding of how the action and game plan flows). I am happy for her that she has come a long way from 2 months ago and she is getting much better. She said right now her photography focus is often OOF and blurry like her life focus.

Got me to thinking and I gave her this advice: This is me talking to her:

"I’m finding that focus on my life in my waning years is indeed a lot like taking a picture——adjusting the focus target to keep it centered and “shooting the important life events at f/1.8”——if I may create an analogy. This allows the unimportant background view of everyday clutter to stay out of focus. I can’t continue to shoot my life at f/32 and keep everything sharp, centered, and in focus. As a fellow photographer you get that. Only God can do that.

Feel free to add your own takes.....

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Tell her to use a group / zone, AI Servo "continuous focus" and BBF. Don't expect every image to be in perfect focus. Rather, take lots of images in bursts and pick the best of the lot and delete the others. Just like everyday won't be the best day of your life, but everyday has potential.

tommystrat Loc: Bigfork, Montana

Amen to your thoughts - I heartily concur... As I age, it seems the little things that may have seemed so important and essential to me at one time turned out to be merely distractions from the things that really matter - God, family and friends. As I am now closer to death than birth, I want to keep the things that truly matter in focus, and let the rest fade into a soft Gaussian blur...

tomcat

Thanks. She is shooting her hobby camera, the Nikon D3300, which has limited choices, but I am surprised at how good that camera is. I was pulling my hair out though, trying to find her equivalent camera settings that match my D3s and Z6 and "some of 'em just ain't there".

The biggest problem is that the viewfinder focus targets just don't light up bright enough and large enough in red like we are accustomed to in our Pro stuff. It's even hard for me to see them and I know what I'm looking for. But she's learning. I would love to loan her my D3s, but I don't know how to clean it after it's been in a potentially covid-19 exposure environment.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Make sure you've downloaded a PDF copy of her manual so you can reference to specific pages and capabilities. Alas, a D3300 has the old school 11-point AF system, so a group / zone is not an option. Hopefully, she has a lens helpful to indoor sports. If she's considering any changes, a lens is / should be considered first as it can mount to any new lenses or shared equipment.

The virus doesn't last long on surfaces, so a risk of sharing equipment is low and can be addressed by just leaving untouched for 8-hours or longer, a day if particularly concerned.

Using an off-center AF point helps on composition, but does depend on a good anticipation of the action. Have her try any of the top three in the frame. Sports that go back n forth in attacking offense might benefit from the 'trailing' AF point for the direction of the action, positioning the player / player's face off-center moving 'into' the frame. One thing that can be done remotely is looking into the details of the images and giving insight into what is good / bad / areas for improvement, including shutterspeed, exposure mode, AF position, etc.

tomcat

She is the Yearbook Editor for the school, so the school was gracious to buy her an 85mm lens, Nikkor 85mm AF-S, f/1.8 which the same lens I was using before I went Z6. I bought her a copy of David Busch's Guide to the D3300 (also to save my sanity, ha ha). The book has been a life saver because the Nikon manuals are useless for any advanced shooting. The hardest problem right now for both of us is to be able to see those 11 focus points in the viewfinder--they are dim and tiny. She is sending the images to me after the games and I'm processing them for her in LR and then sending them back with critiques. She has really come a long ways but a faster focusing camera will be the biggest help for her in the long run. We both talked about her Yearbook plans from the very beginning, which is to get a few that would be suitable for publishing. She has those now, but since she is enjoying her new hobby and becoming an "essential" part of the school's sports program, I'm giving her plenty of line and letting her run free. I believe she is enjoying her new role now and I'm enjoying it for her.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Excellent! She should have the Nikon software installed on her end, being free and giving access to the AF points, at least after the fact.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

Is the beep turned on?

tomcat

Won't matter with AF-C. Great question though.

lbjed Loc: New York

AMEN !!

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

Question. What sport? I started shooting sports as an assistant SID in the late 60s using a nifty 50 on a Zeiss Icon moving on to being a staff photographer for a small sports magazine. No strobes, tri-x 400 pushed to 1600 in processing. Focusing was manual via a split screen. I’d shoot a couple of rolls, develop the film there, loupe them and print out the best to put on the wires within an hour of the end of the game. So it can be done by a few steps. One is positioning based on sport. Best angle for basketball is at a 45 degree angle on the floor usually on left side depending on where the refs and cheerleaders are situated. If you are having focusing issues you could prefocus on a spot and shoot on burst. For vb, either shooting from behind the back line getting the hitters and maybe any digs or right on floor tight against the stand of head ref. In all cases you need to be aware of your surroundings as players, refs and cheerleaders will run you over so what always did was use my dominant eye on the optical viewfinder while my left eye watched action. Btw, I still shoot for my college team ( not now) at 71 but what a difference. Strobes in gym set off by popper on my camera, being able to shoot at ISO 100 , wide open, with good burst. Even though shooting hundreds of images my hit rate is about 5% are good shots but way better than the 1 to 2% shooting film. One last thought, sit down and study the sports on tv and think angles.

tomcat

Basketball and volleyball right now. I've been hit a couple of times in the past, and the worst one was a soccer ball. I learned a few years ago to watch the basketball referees and see which one was at half court. Then I'd know which one was going to block my view when the offense came back down the court and I'd move over to the other side. I don't have enough funds to put strobes in the gym. I did notice that our Carolina Hurricanes have them and it bothered me the first game that I went to, but after I got used to it, now I don't notice them going off.

SouthShooter Loc: Southern USA

Great wisdom in that

Photocraig

I HATE the beep. But I have learned to LOVE TO HATE the beep, when shooting sports.

tomcat

I have turned the Beep off totally. When in AF-S, at an event, like a Christmas play, some audience members would look at me when the beeps would go off. So I just look for the red box to turn into a green box in AF-S. Of course, when shooting sports, in AF-C, I don't even look for focus confirmation. I've read that the focus will look on at the initial or subsequent exposure when in Continuous mode and it happens so quickly, that you're taking the 3rd shot before the camera's electronics can acknowledge that the 2nd one was in focus--makes sense to me. When shooting sports, I'm looking only at where the subject is going and I don't have a clue what else is happening in the viewfinder. I just those good old Nikon AF systems to work and they do......