I am facing problems with getting clear pictures when zooming in on soccer players...any suggestions?
I am facing problems with getting clear pictures when zooming in on soccer players...any suggestions?
I am new to this. After years of employing a compact, I made a decision to "upgrade" to the Nikon P500. To be fair it's an excellent camera, from where I came from.
However, I find it hard to urge consistent clear shots while in zoom (up to 36x) during a stadium - especially trying to urge that shot of a football (soccer) player(s) on the field in action. What would be the simplest or suggested options I exploit for the camera?
Eric Kong
Answer:
Eric, there are a number of things that can cause motion blur or a photo that lacks sharpness when a superzoom camera such as the Nikon P500 is fully zoomed in. Since you mention you are having problems taking pictures of football/soccer players in a stadium setting the first thing that comes to mind is the question: Are you taking pictures during daylight games or night games? The reason for that is that even in well-lit professional stadiums taking nighttime sports action photos is a real challenge even for a good quality DSLR. That is because even in well-lit stadiums and fields your lighting conditions are less than ideal for photography and you often need a DSLR with a fast f2.8 lens and higher ISO speeds to get a high enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur. Fortunately, the Nikon P500 has manual controls that allow you to tweak your settings and improve your chances of getting some great action photos.
Here are a couple of tips to assist you to improve your chances of getting clear pictures together with your Nikon P500 during sporting events.
1. Use the viewfinder rather than the LCD display for taking pictures. The reason for this is often that it's much easier for many people to carry the camera steady when rummaging through the viewfinder than it's when holding the camera several inches faraway from your face and using the LCD display. Using the viewfinder brings the camera closer to your body along with your arms and elbows and with proper technique makes it a lot easier to avoid even small amounts of camera shake when fully zoomed out.
2. Make sure you are not using digital zoom. You stand a much better chance of getting clear pictures if you only use the optical zoom. The P500 has a 4X digital zoom which magnifies the picture digitally so any small amount of blur or out of focus will be magnified. I would recommend making sure the digital zoom is turned off or not used at all for sports photography.
3. In difficult to focus situations Nikon recommends that you simply “press the shutter release button halfway to refocus several times”. This is alleged to help the camera identify the topic and lock in on the main target. They also mention that there are often some “rare cases where the topic isn't focused albeit the main target indicator lights green.” in fact, the Nikon P500 does have a manual focus mode for very difficult to focus occasions.
4. I recommend that you try different autofocus modes to see if that helps. By default, your P500 is set to “single AF” mode which means it does not focus until you press the shutter button down halfway. When shooting fast-action sports you will likely get better results by changing to the “Full Time” autofocus mode which means that the camera is continuously focusing until you press the shutter all the way down and take the picture. While this mode will decrease your battery life, the continuous autofocus mode is the best one to help you stay focused on fast-action sports such as soccer. The Nikon P500 also has a “subject tracking” focus mode which is supposed to help the camera’s autofocus track a moving subject. That would be another mode you'll try but normally for sports photography, i like to recommend the “full-time AF” mode be used.
5. Another likely cause of blurry pictures is camera shake from using too slow of shutter speed. A good rule of thumb to recollect is what's referred to as the reciprocal rule of photography. This rule simply states that the shutter speed must be as fast as or faster than the reciprocal of the focal distance of the lens. While that might sound complicated it really isn’t. For example, if you're zoomed during a 300mm your shutter speed should be a minimum of 1/300 of a second or faster. Since the Nikon P500 has a 35mm equivalence when fully zoomed in of 810mm this means that your shutter speed for optimal sharpness should be at least 1/800 of a second or faster. Depending on the lighting conditions you might have problems getting that fast enough of a shutter speed especially when shooting in automatic mode.
6. The best way to get the fastest possible shutter speed is to use the “Aperture Priority” mode on the camera. This mode allows you to manually set your aperture to the largest opening (smallest f-stop setting, i.e. f2.8, etc.) This opens the lens up wider to allow the maximum amount of light to reach the image sensor and thus allows the fastest possible shutter speed to properly expose the image. Also during this mode, you manually set your ISO to a better number if needed to take care of a quick shutter speed.
Eric, by changing your autofocus to full-time or continuous and using aperture mode to try and keep your shutter speed as high as possible I really believe you can capture some great photos of your favorite soccer/football players in action. If the following pointers assist you i might like to have you ever post a number of the photos you're taking as samples of what the Nikon P500 is capable of doing.
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