Sports with MF lenses?

[martinsmith99]

Does anyone shoot any sports with MF lenses?

I shot an ice hockey game on Saturday with awful lighting. The lenses I took were AF lenses. A Canon 50/1.8 & 70/200 F4 L.

The 70-200 was barely useable as at F4 and 3200iso my shutter speed was as low as 1/60 on some parts of the pitch. Also, I rarely went past 100mm. The 50/1.8 gave me some respectable shutter speeds, but is not great wide open.

If I'm asked to shoot again, would it be worth taking my 55/1.8 tak and maybe 90/2.5 Tamron, or is this just pointless for such a fast moving game?

[Screamin Scott]

With fast moving scenes sports, you either have to use a high powered flash (if indoors & it is permitted) to stop action, or try to anticipate a shot. Panning is another option. AF lenses will only help if the action is perpendicular to you. Oncoming shots are still normally too fast for the camera to get focus. That's where anticipating & pre-focusing helps. It's not perfect, but it will get you more keepers.

[yalcinaydin]

Basketball with Rolleinar 2.8/135@2.8.
No pre-focusing just followed the action with manually and continuously focusing, panning I have like 20 fine shots out of 500
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yalcinaydin/sets/72157608519150927/

# Canon EOS 5D@ISO1600,1/100

[Attila]

Chess ? Tai-Chi ? Tricky is you should focus a point and catch player there.

[peterqd]

That last one is a great example of panning, Yalcin.

Martin, if you can frame the shot as you want, I think the 1.8/55 is a great choice. The focal length is short enough to give you a more usable depth of field than a tele, but still long enough to fill the frame with the action. It's a trade-off between the two. If the action is farther away you'll need the 90mm lens, but you're are also more likely to suffer camera shake. The pro sports photographers seem to use monopods a lot of the time - that might be an idea for you too.

[martinsmith99]

Thanks, this has at least given me more options. I'll buy the Canon 85/1.8 when funds and wife permits but the Tak is MUCH better than the Canon 50/1.8 wide open. I was thinking of the Tammy instead of the 70-200.

I shot handheld with my 70-200 at 1/60 and got mostly shake-free shots. That's one thing about photography I can get right even I drink too much tea & coffee!

[Ballu]

I once captured Columbus Blue Jacket game with RebelXt and manual focus lenses,

- Tamron 80-250mm f3.8, nikon mount (last 5-6)
- Rokkor 135mm f2.5, T-mount. broken focussing mechanism
- Helios 85mm f2.0, M42 mopunt (only 1 or 2)
- Takumar 50mm f1.4, M42 mount (I think 1 pic)

You can find the pics at flickr set,

http://flickr.com/photos/asbalyan/sets/72157594363749586/

Some are,







But I tried once at my son's soccer field, failed miserably. At hockey match, I was little higher up. So focusing point had lot of DoF, but sitting at boundary at eye level,.... its really difficult (but I didnt has focussing screen, was trying with live view...).

[yalcinaydin]

Ballu great shots

[jamesdak]

I've shot some manual focus stuff at a couple of soccer games for the heck of it. Hard to get accurate focus though. But the shots I nailed using my Leica 180/3.4 APO blew away the other shots taken with my Canon 70-200/2.8L IS USM. Color, sharpness and most importantly lower contrast giving me less blown highlights where all positives for the Leica. I'm sure with more practice I can get a higher percentage of keepers.

[Orio]

MF is better than AF for sports.
Use prefocusing technique (google for info).
Make sure you have enough speed in the shutter to freeze motion (unless you are looking for movement effects).
Try to anticipate events for what is possible (think of it like shooting with gun, you need to aim slightly in front of moving target according to speed of target, sports usually have repetitive actions, i.e. if you photograph a tennis player who is receivng a ball on his forehand, you know in advance what motions he will do, so have to click a little before he hits ball in order to catch the moment)

-

[aoleg]

Actually, the latest generation of AF confirmation chips for Canon EOS cameras sold by filmprocess.ru and numerous vendors on eBay allows for "focus priority" shooting, which is quite good for sports and fast moving subjects. That is, in One Shot AF mode selected on the camera you depress the shutter button fully and start focusing with the lens. Once the correct focus is achieved, the camera takes a shot instantly. (If you don't like that, it's easy to switch to the passive AF confirmation mode by simply choosing AI Servo). I bought two adapters with this latest chip from eBay (I remember a thread here about them, BTW), and they work like a marvel

[RnR]

Why doesn't this forum have the facility to report spam? Like the post above?

[visualopsins]

[martinsmith99]

Gosh - One of my posts back from the dead.

[cooltouch]

Back in the days when film was the only option and a fast ISO was 400, yeah, I shot sports with MF lenses -- mostly because that's all I had. When I was in college back in the mid-80s, I covered my university's basketball home games. Shooting Tri-X, mostly with my Vivitar S1 28-90 and either my Canon FTb or F-1 with a Vivitar 285 strobe. Around this same time, I was freelancing motorsports events, shooting Fujichrome 100 and Kodachrome 64. Shooting motorsports, at those ISOs, it wasn't about freezing the action, it was all about smooth panning. Actually, when shooting race cars, about the fastest shutter speed I wanted to use was 1/125. Any faster than that and the blur of the wheels and background was gone, which made the cars look like they were standing still on the track.

A few years ago, I attended a motorcycle road race event, shooting with my NEX 7 (at ISO 100) and my Tamron SP 300mm f/2.8 LD IF. To get accurate focus, I did the same as I did in the good old film days. I prefocused on a spot on the track and tripped the shutter when the bike hit that spot, panning through it. The images came out great, except I made the mistake of shooting on Aperture Priority auto and it set too high of a shutter speed, resulting in most of the shots with no wheel or background blur. Dang it.

See what I mean? The out-of-focus background is because I was shooting with that 300 set to f/2.8.


But when shooting when the bikes were coming straight at me, the too high shutter speed wasn't so bad.

[jamaeolus]

It's possible to do so, of course. Back when no alternative existed everybody shooting sports did. You can still prepare your own glass plates with colloidion too. You are not likely to be competitive in the fast world of sports photography sales though. A friend who used MF lenses for most of his work until pretty recently explained "with landscapes and flowers the ability to precisely choose the focus point trumps the speed capabilities of AF". He recently went hunting bald eagles and happened across a place in Washington state where some unusual owls were known to be coming out at 4 PM each day. He had dozens of razor sharp photos of owls, in flight. Many of them with the owl staring straight into the camera. Nat Geo level stuff. He was shooting handheld with a Sony A1. Their AF system is truly incredible. Use the best tool (that you can afford) that is available for the job. A crescent wrench can pound in a nail, but hammer works a lot better.

[piggsy]

I don't shoot sports but I do shoot insects and birds on the move a lot with MF lenses.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmbPcmKD

The thing I'd recommend most is using a camera with a high speed shooting mode - at least 15fps, though 60 is really really good for this. Or, some version of what olympus calls pro-capture - where you constantly shoot frames to the internal buffer, and releasing the shutter writes the last x frames recorded + the next x frames recorded to the sdcard. Totally changes how you approach shooting this stuff.

Slower the frame rate the harder it is, though I've done it a lot on the old E-P5 in single shot mode, you're getting closer to relying on luck.

[gaeger]

Practice and technique, together. Fancy lenses aren't really necessary.


#1


#2


#3


#4

[gaeger]

And a couple from indoors:

[IAZA]

well, I shot with projector lenses for some sports. Here's with heavy Visionar 100/1,6 indoor
http://forum.mflenses.com/asian-table-tennis-championship-t81031,highlight,%2Btennis.html

[Farside]

[Farside]

Trap focus is a useful tool, too.



Pentax K10D with Rubinar 300 reflex lens adjusted for Pentax.

[Lloydy]

I love the trap focus on my K10, I've scraped the paint off the back of a few lenses - or used aluminium tape - and it's deadly accurate. I wish my Sony's would do it.