The Sports Photo Guy

My buddy Earlane in Lexington, KY – an accomplished shooter and gadgetmaker – and I were “talking shop” recently and he posed the old question about what exposure mode I shot – manual, shutter priority, aperture priority, or program mode.  My answer?  All of them!

I’ve even been known to use those “amateur” features – Digital Vari-Programs in Nikonspeak – the icons for portraiture, sports action, etc.  All of these modes are just tools in your box; use the one that fits the situation.

Program (P). This is the camera’s basic exposure solution.  It’s a pretty straightforward tradeoff between aperture and shutter speed, as shown in the D300 manual by the diagram on page 404.  In sports photography, I often use this mode for crowd shots in bright light.  I’m usually shooting wide angle, and this mode will give me both a reasonably high shutter speed and small aperture – enough to stop movement in the crowd and give a fairly broad depth of field.

Shutter Priority (S). This is a setting where you control the shutter speed, and the camera adjusts the aperture automatically to achieve proper exposure.  I will often use this mode when using telephoto lenses in a stage or auditorium setting, where lighting may not be great and I want the greatest possible depth of field.  I set a shutter speed that is fast enough to prevent blur (using the old reciprocal of the focal length rule of thumb, and proper handling technique) – for example, I’ll set a value of “200″ (1/200 shutter speed) for the 80-200/f2.8 AF-S.

Aperture Priority (P). This is probably the mode I used most often until the D300 came along and I switched to manual exposure mode.  For sports, setting the lowest f-number (widest aperture) guarantees you the fastest possible shutter speed for freezing the action, as well as shallow depth of field to blur distracting backgrounds.  Often times, I will stop down one below the widest aperture (say, f4 when using an f2.8 lens) as many lenses are not particularly sharp wide open.  For non-sports shooting, controlling the aperture is primarily for controlling depth of field, allowing me to choose a narrow range of focus when I want to isolate a subject.  Conversely, setting a large f-number (narrow aperture) maximizes my depth of field.

Manual (M). This used to be strictly the domain of control freaks, and was seldom a mode I ever used until the advent of Nikon’s ISO Auto Sensitivity Control and the Secret D300 High-Speed Auto ISO Trick.  Turn off ISO Auto Sensitivity Control if you want absolute manual control, otherwise you can choose exactly the shutter speed/aperture combination you want, and let the camera adjust the ISO automatically to match.