Stanley's Tune Up Ritual for the Football Season

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 51200, ƒ/5.6, 1/1250

This past Friday Night and during the day on Saturday I went through a tune-up. There are basically two parts to the tune up.

First I have bought new cameras since the last football game and needed to calibrate the lens to the camera body.

This is a photo I took when I talked about how to calibrate your lenses in an earlier blog post. Take a look here if you want a refresher on how to do this.

Today's top end cameras and lenses are designed for the user to optimize the focusing through calibrating the focus point. I use LensAlign and here is a great video explaining how it works.

So I spent a number of hours doing this with my cameras and lenses. Now I shoot with a Sigma 120-300mm lens and recommend you look at that blog post where I explain how I calibrated the lens using Sigma Optimization Pro software coupled with the Sigma USB docking station to calibrate the lens. I also use it to calibrate my Sigma 24-105mm Art and Sigma 35mm Art lens.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 720, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000

The second thing I do each year is to go out and shoot some football games before my first job shooting a game. This year I went to the Catholic High School near me and shot their home varsity game on Friday night and then shot their 7th grade team playing the next morning.

Now before actually taking photos of the game I set my Nikon D5 camera up for shooting the game. Here is a blog post going through all the settings and explaining this is great detail for those who have a Nikon D5 and want to see my settings for sports. Here are my settings for the Nikon D4.

Let me tell you that the Nikon D5 was a definite upgrade over the Nikon D4. When shooting on high speed motor drive of 12 frames per second I can say it looked more like an old time movie. You could still see the action through the mirror because of the speed of the camera. Very cool!!!!.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 720, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000

For those of you who are just starting out shooting sports like your child's games, don't just go and shoot their games when getting started. Go and practice at the local recreation center and get used to following the action and keeping it in focus. I use the back focus button so I can then improve my chances of getting in focus photos. You need to try my setup to see what I mean.

Honestly being able to just walk up and start shooting a kids game like I did this weekend is so much more relaxing than getting to a game two hours early that you must do when shooting Division 1 college and when shooting the NFL.

Another thing with shooting for fun is if you want to stop you can. When shooting professionally you must arrive early and stay to the very end. Now if you want to get hired to shoot professionally then you need to learn why we get there early and stay late.

Rather than telling you what we shoot when we arrive early and stay late–let me challenge you to arrive early and stay late and try and make compelling photos around the entire game.

Have you tuned up for this football season?

Sports Shooter Question: ƒ/4 Fast Enough for NFL?

Nikon D4, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 with 1.4 converter, Shot at 630mm, ISO 51200, ƒ/5.6, 1/2000

I saw this post on Sports Shooter and responded to the question because I think sometimes photographers consider a lens or camera and don't realize there are many settings that can impact sharpness of a photo and acceptable noise for publication.

My Response

I think with today's cameras capabilities with high ISO should not be a problem using a 300mm ƒ/4 lens for NFL football night or day games.

The question you should always be asking is will the photos of the subject connect with the audience. 

I would then even take test shots at many different ISO settings and then compare the results to how the photos are published for that audience.

This is closeup on the photo above. Notice one major thing between the two photos, display size. This impacts the noise being seen. Again how will the audience view your work?

If they are primarily a website then you can get away with more than in print. 

Through the years there are a few things I have noticed that really impact this discussion with sports.

I have noticed a significant difference in sharpness of my photos when I drop below 1/1000. 

There are a few factors that impact focus. So often people blame a lens when it could be a few other things.

Factors Impacting Sharpness [which can make something look in or out of focus]

1. I found separating the shutter from focusing and using the back button to focus and the shutter release to fire the camera improved focusing.
2. Adjust the fine tune focus on the camera to match the lens. Each camera is different. I use LensAlign 
3. Many of the lenses that I thought didn't focus that fast magically are great once I upgraded my cameras to newer models.
4. My Nikon D4 all of a sudden got ten times sharper images when I upgraded the firmware.
5. On the Nikon system we have focus tracking. You can change how fast or slow the computer tells the camera to hunt for change in focus point. This can make a difference if something comes between you and the subject ever so briefly [referee]
6. How many focus points you use for a sport. Sometimes you need fewer and sometimes more. This is why the camera manufacturers give you choices, so you can maximize your equipment for each situation.

Here is a quick video showing how calibrating your lens can improve the focusing.


My point is you can have a ƒ/1.4 lens that should be tact sharp, but because of all the things I mentioned above will perform badly.

With today's cameras ability to shoot high ISO, auto focus in lower light than before I think you should be just fine with a ƒ/4 lens shooting.

Here are some of my photos from a HS Football game shooting at 12,800 in earlier post.

I was curious about pushing the ISO even higher to improve the sharpness of photos and get even more keepers, so I went to another HS Football game and pushed my ISO to 51,200 and here are those results. 

Bottom line is always test something before shooting for the client.