Settings for sporting events

pertykat2

I am new to this camera and very excited. My main purpose is to shoot my children's sporting events - indoor basketball, football, softball games at night and cheerleading. My question is, between the 18-55mm and 55-200mm, which is the better lens to use? What's the best setup for inside a gym and outside under baseball field lights?

bruto

The biggest difference here will be in framing, as the lenses behave much the same in other respects. Your best bet here is to go out with your camera and aim it at things. Determine what you want to take a picture of and how close you are going to be to it. If things are fairly close and you want a wide view, use the short lens. If things are far away and you want a narrow view, use the long one. Practice a lot. Shoot and erase, and shoot and erase. Try things out.

Remember too that your eye and brain can pick out a subject in a way that a photograph cannot. Your field of view is very wide, yet you can mentally zoom in on a subject. Often when you take a picture, what seemed like a prominent subject turns out to look small and distant. Dig in a bit. The DSLR has no "digital zoom", but you can crop in post processing (especially if you shoot in RAW or largest JPG mode). Try, though, to get the picture without cropping it later.

Neither of these lenses will be optimal for night baseball, because they're rather slow. If the lights are bright enough you can still do it, but focusing will be dodgy, and you'll likely have to use a high ISO. If you have trouble focusing, set the lens a little wider. Its aperture is larger when it's wide, and it may focus better. You can either zoom in after that, or shoot and crop later. The "Sports" setting will work pretty well in bright enough light. Keep track of what settings the sports setting ends up with, and later you can use shutter priority mode with a little more control. Every shot you take has embedded information in an "EXIF" file that can be read by some software, including Nikon View NX2, and there's a menu setting to enable display on the camera.

If you use another mode, make sure your shutter speed is fast enough to stop motion. 1/1000 is likely good. 1/250 is as slow as you're likely to want to go. Set your auto focus mode to "C" for continuous focus on moving objects, and either "dynamic area" or "3D". 3D will work best if movement is fairly steady, and your subject stands out from his or her surroundings, a running player, for example. If your subject is moving erratically, and if his color blends with his surroundings, try dynamic area. This camera is "focus priority", which means it will not fire unless it finds focus. If you have problems in low light or fast action, you might try multi point focus, which often locks on better. It's not usually as accurate, but it's usually able to find something.

If using dynamic area or 3d focusing, it always starts on a single point, which is the focus area lit by the little red light in your finder. You can move it with the back control, but the center one is the fastest. Hit the [OK] button to recenter it if you find you have accidentally moved it.

Avoid the "auto" mode setting because it will actuate the flash, which is useless at distance, and it will default to multi point focus.

Practice panning, following a moving subject with the camera. When you get good at this, you can get good effects with sharp subjects on a blurred background.

pertykat2

Thank you.

EGB64

We took the plunge and bought a fast zoom lens (Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8) as we take a LOT of sporting pix both in hockey rinks and on the lacrosse fields. Do you have any suggestions on the best settings to use for outdoor shots? Should I use shutter priority mode since I have the lower f/stop lens and set it above 1/1500? Also, what would an advisable ISO be?