Basic equipment for sports photography
Sports photography requires a relatively higher investment in equipment. While having more equipment is good, its possible to take good sports photographs with just the basics.
Lets check some of them out:
Telephoto and super-telephoto lenses: Depending up on the sport you cover, the focal length of the lens required would vary from 70 mm to 500mm. While covering a soccer match, the highest focal length needed would be higher compared to a golf tournament, where the playing field is bigger. For boxing matches, the focal length needed would be less than that for football or golf
Normal and wide-angle lenses: If you are using a telephoto lens for covering the main event - Keep a 35mm wide angle or 50mm normal lens attached to your spare camera body and keep it pre-focused for 10-15 meters. This is to be prepared, if something happens among the spectators or close to you. Otherwise you won’t be able to shoot it with your telephoto lens. For example, if the one of spectators sitting behind you breaks out into a dance to support the team, you can be ready with your 50mm lens, which gives you higher depth of field and is already pre-focused.
Fast lenses: Fast lenses are important for sports photography – of course, expensive as well. To capture moving players, you have to use higher shutter-speeds of 1/1000 or 1/2000. Fast lenses minimise the loss of light due to reflection, refraction and scattering, helping you make maximum use of the available light.
# Shutter speed is the length of time the shutter is open to capture the scene. For example, if the set shutter speed is “10” the shutter will open for one tenth of a second
Professional-level camera bodies: Professional-level camera bodies are also essential for sports photography. They have has superior TTL (Through The Lens) metering – that helps you to measure the available light easily and accurately, fast focusing, fast shutter release and many more.
Another important feature that professional-level cameras offer is good quality photos at high ASA numbers. Cameras like Canon 1D or Nikon D3 produce superiors quality photos even at 2500ASA!
In short, professional-level camera bodies and fast lenses with appropriate focal lengths give you an advantage, and at the professional level, this starts to make a real difference Tri-pods, monopods, filters and flash gels are also some must have items.