Hello-I'm new to the R6m2 model. For the past few years, I've had the 80D. I mainly shoot the sports that my son plays. For simplicity sake (because I haven't had time to explore all the camera has to offer yet), I shot the past 2 football outings on the "Sports" mode. Both shootings were in the daylight and both with the R24-240 lens.
99% of my photos last week were very sharp and crisp. I took those from the stands, about at the 50 yard line.
At yesterday's outing, the auto-focus just wouldn't focus. I was sitting on the practice field, about 10 yards from the goalpost.
As the hour went on, some got crisp.
With the same lens, the same lighting, and the same settings, it didn’t make sense to me why there was such a drastic difference in the sharpness of the shots.
Does anyone have any thoughts or advice? I know I have miles to go in improvement, and I'm excited for the journey. I'm just baffled as to why the difference.
Thanks!
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Rick nailed the most common reasons for blur but I have a feeling that some of your blurry photos may be related to focus points and distance from the action.
But let's start with motion and action blur. Typically for football you like to be at a shutter speed of 1/800 and 1/1,000 or even higher (when lighting is excellent and using fast glass) is preferable but in horrible lighting conditions you will get SOME decent photos as low as 1/500. But with the daylight you were shooting in, I would set shutter speed to 1/1,000 until it gets near dusk and drop to 1/800 if needed. Typically for sports, you would keep the lens "wide open" (aperture at its minimum number setting). I shoot sports in manual mode with the aperture typically wide open and the shutter speed fixed at 1/800 or 1/1,000 depending upon lighting. With this shutter speed, neither player motion nor camera shake will impact sharpness.
Then set the camera to auto ISO to allow it to set ISO to complete the exposure triangle.
Next is focus and regardless of the "technology level" of the AF system, I rely on single point AF with some expansion around that single point. As the photographer, you and the camera are partners and your part is knowing the sport so you know which part of a group of players is actually the important player/part.
Typically I set the single point with expansion near the center of the viewfinder but for some sports (and uniforms) better results will occur with moving the group of points slightly above or below center. This setup not only allows you to "tell" the camera what is important but it helps you be better as a photographer by forcing you to keep the action roughly in the center of the field of view.
Finally, shoot in RAW instead of JPG if you have been using JPG. RAW retains the original sensor data allowing you to do proper white balance and excellent noise reduction (and other required cleanup) in post. Canon's own free DPP is an excellent program for working with Canon RAW files and the majority of images I shoot at sports events never get run through my Adobe software because Canon's DPP can do the needed editing.
But I think the biggest thing is ensuring that you are restricting the AF focal point system to do what YOU need rather than trying to let it think for you when it shouldn't. I was shooting from just inside the endzone when I caught this image and this was set up by a quick hand off a few moments earlier. I could see how the play was going to unfold and started tracking where I knew it was going and got a pretty cool shot. It wouldn't have happened if the camera and I (1DX III body with 70-200 f2.8 glass) weren't working together with the selected AF setup forcing me to stay fully attuned to the action as it unfolded.
Rodger
Rick nailed the most common reasons for blur but I have a feeling that some of your blurry photos may be related to focus points and distance from the action.
But let's start with motion and action blur. Typically for football you like to be at a shutter speed of 1/800 and 1/1,000 or even higher (when lighting is excellent and using fast glass) is preferable but in horrible lighting conditions you will get SOME decent photos as low as 1/500. But with the daylight you were shooting in, I would set shutter speed to 1/1,000 until it gets near dusk and drop to 1/800 if needed. Typically for sports, you would keep the lens "wide open" (aperture at its minimum number setting). I shoot sports in manual mode with the aperture typically wide open and the shutter speed fixed at 1/800 or 1/1,000 depending upon lighting. With this shutter speed, neither player motion nor camera shake will impact sharpness.
Then set the camera to auto ISO to allow it to set ISO to complete the exposure triangle.
Next is focus and regardless of the "technology level" of the AF system, I rely on single point AF with some expansion around that single point. As the photographer, you and the camera are partners and your part is knowing the sport so you know which part of a group of players is actually the important player/part.
Typically I set the single point with expansion near the center of the viewfinder but for some sports (and uniforms) better results will occur with moving the group of points slightly above or below center. This setup not only allows you to "tell" the camera what is important but it helps you be better as a photographer by forcing you to keep the action roughly in the center of the field of view.
Finally, shoot in RAW instead of JPG if you have been using JPG. RAW retains the original sensor data allowing you to do proper white balance and excellent noise reduction (and other required cleanup) in post. Canon's own free DPP is an excellent program for working with Canon RAW files and the majority of images I shoot at sports events never get run through my Adobe software because Canon's DPP can do the needed editing.
But I think the biggest thing is ensuring that you are restricting the AF focal point system to do what YOU need rather than trying to let it think for you when it shouldn't. I was shooting from just inside the endzone when I caught this image and this was set up by a quick hand off a few moments earlier. I could see how the play was going to unfold and started tracking where I knew it was going and got a pretty cool shot. It wouldn't have happened if the camera and I (1DX III body with 70-200 f2.8 glass) weren't working together with the selected AF setup forcing me to stay fully attuned to the action as it unfolded.
Rodger
