The Sports Photo Guy

I recently had the opportunity to shoot some of the action at the 2008 NCAA Division III Softball Championships. Check out some of the images as well as my settings for this sport.

Caught Stealing. 1/1600 @ f4, ISO 1250, Sigma 120-300/f2.8.

Women’s fast-pitch softball is an interesting sport with some important differences from baseball.  The D300 has a number of features that are well-suited to capturing the action.

One thing I relied on photographing the championships this year was the Secret D300 High-Speed Auto ISO Trick.  This allowed me to set my preferred shutter speed (usually 1/1600) as well as aperture (f4 or f2.8) and the camera would automatically adjust the aperture to fit lighting and scene conditions.  1/1600 is a good speed for women’s fast-pitch, as this will usually show an ever-so-slight amount of ball movement while freezing other aspects of the action.

 

Release. 1/1250 @ f2.8, ISO 900, AF-S Nikkor 80-200/f2.8D.

 Other settings I used are as follows (where they differ from factory defaults):

Shooting Menu 

• Quality: JPG Normal - Really more than enough quality; I find the D300’s out-of-camera JPGs are just about perfect.
• Image Size: L - Make every pixel count!
• JPEG Compression: Quality
• White Balance: Auto (varies by location, of course)
• Picture Control: Standard - I like this for sports, natural yet bright colors and decent skin tones.
  • Sharpening +5
  • Saturation +2
• Color Space: Adobe RGB
• Active D-Lighting: Normal/Low - Active D-Lighting is the bomb!
• High ISO NR: Off - In-camera NR is better than the D200’s “cartoonish” look, but I still prefer NeatImage for high-ISO images.
• ISO auto sensitivity control: On - Thanks to the Secret D300 High-Speed Auto ISO Trick, this is a very useful setting!  I allow ISO to float all the way up to 3200 depending on the lighting conditions.

Custom Settings

• a1 AF-C priority selection: Release + focus - I find that when shooting at the greater distances involved in outdoor sports, giving the D300 just a bit more time to acquire and lock focus is useful.
• a3 Dyanmic AF area: 51 points (3D-tracking) - It’s amazing how useful and accurate this mode can be.  With players generally spaced widely apart, it’s easy to lock on.  And the 3D-tracking is extremely useful for keeping the focus on, for example, the pitcher’s eyes during a herky-jerky windup motion.
• a4 Focus tracking with lock-on: Long
• d2 Viewfinder grid display: On
• d10 MB-D10 battery type: FR6 - I keep a battery tray loaded with AA lithiums as a long-term backup power source.
• e1 Flash sync speed: 1/250 (Auto FP) - Gives me maximum flash flexibility.
• e2 Flash shutter speed: 1/30 - If I’m shooting flash I will likely have a VR lens mounted (18-200).
• e7 Bracketing order: under/meter/over - It only makes sense…
• f1 Multi-selector center button
  • Shooting: Select center focus point - Especially with so many to choose from, I need to get back on center quickly!
  • Playback: Show histograms - I like my cameras to behave consistently with one another.
• f3 Photo info/playback: On - See above.
• f4 Assign FUNC. button: FV lock (button press) - Consistently use function button for this function.
• f9 No memory card: Lock - Yes, I’ve shot games with no card (or no film) in the camera, so I always set this function!

I also found myself dialing in a little exposure compensation: +0.3 of a stop during an overcast game, and +0.7 of a stop when shooting into a bright, early evening sun.  I find these values fairly consistent to use with the D300’s matrix metering.  I also took advantage of sun’s backlighting to get some under-exposed shots (dialing in -0.3 of a stop).

Windup.  1/1600 @ f4, ISO 900, Sigma 120-300/f2.8.