Express Action Sports

I have a Nikon D40 and would like to take action shots of snowboarders in the snow. Which settings should I put for the best results? Please also tell me for both sunny or cloudy because I don’t know what the conditions will be.

This is a difficult question to answer in a brief manner with a blanket solution. I am assuming that whether cloudy or sunny, you will be shooting during the day.

You MUST learn how to change the exposure and read the exposure light meter. Do lots of reading (the manual). This will help you get the best shots possible.

But for a quick answer, try this:

For moving targets try Dynamic Area Auto-Focus (AF)
Here is a link discussing AF use shooting sports: http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=25922

You will likely want to use "Shutter-Priority" mode when shooting.
Use shutter speeds longer than 1/100th of a second to get some motion blur. Shutter speeds shorter than 1/250th of a second will freeze the action and make the subjects look less motion blurred.

If you pan the camera with the snowboarder and use a shutter speed longer than 1/100th of a second, you may get the snowboarder to appear crisply and the whole background to be motion blurred.

When shooting pictures of air, the lower the camera is, the higher the air will look… and ideally the camera is on the peak-side, facing down the hill (if the camera is facing up the hill to look at a jump, there will not be any visual reference for height.

For a very bright, sunny day – try ISO100 first. The lower the ISO, the less digital noise your images will have and the crisper they will be. If ISO100 makes the shutter too slow or images two dark, adjust it up to 200 or 400. When you exceed 400, the noise will drastically increase. It is unlikely that you will need to go that high in daylight conditions.

800 and 1600 should be reserved for dark or indoor shots only, when you would not otherwise get the shot… or when you want a noisy grainy shot (sometimes people like noisy black and white shots).

These ideas should work in most cases; but seriously… it is all about trial and error with exposure settings… and nobody can tell you precise settings without being there and metering the light.

If you know how to, meter your shots every step between -1 to 0 to +1 EV… and when you find the most appealing setting, use that.

If you shoot in RAW, you can adjust brightness and contrast a little bit without image degradation… when you get home and put them on your computer. This only gives you a little bit of wiggle room though, not a lot.

Good luck

Soccer specifically! I need a good camera, nothing too expensive or flashy, just a basic good camera for taking action pictures during a game.

easy points 🙂

The minimum camera for great sports photography will be a:

Nikon D7000
Nikon AF-S 80-20mm f/2.8

You have to go with the D7000 to use the AF-S 80-200mm lens. The lens is the most important thing here.

If you are in bright daylight conditions, you can go with a less capable lens, and if you do that, then the camera can be less expensive (but you will not get the high speed performance of the f/2.8 telephoto lens).

Nikon D3200
Nikon AF-S 55-300mm

These are the best combinations of high quality for the lowest cost.

If you are not wanting to spend this much money, then your quality will diminish. In that case, look for a Nikon P7100 or Canon G12. The major issue here though is the lens may not be long enough for distant closeups.

However, avoid bridge cameras or other compact cameras at all costs. The problem is the shutter lag is so long with those cameras that it will be all but impossible to capture an action photo. You will probably get so frustrated with this that you will fling your camera out onto the field so the players can practice kicking it.