Sports mode shooting with Canon 70-200 f/2.8

[donnman]

Can I still use the continuous sports shooting mode on my XSI with the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens? Currently I use my 50mm f/1.4 lens for this type of shooting but I have recently upgraded the lens as I needed more reach for football, baseball, volleyball and swimming.





Thanks,


Don

[Oren]

Hmmm... not quite sure what mode is "continuous sports shooting"? [*-)]

[Mark Elberson]

I'll assume that you either mean the "Sports" setting on the "Mode Dial" or you simply mean the continuous "Drive Mode". Either of these two settings will work just fine with your 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens :-) Enjoy!

[George Slusher]

You can use that mode with any autoexposure lens, as far as I know. However, it might be good to learn to use the other modes, where you have more control. You just bought a very expensive lens. It's a shame to limit yourself by using the "zone" modes on the camera. Do some experimenting and learn to use the aperture-priority (AV) and shutter-priority (TV) modes. Each has advantages and disadvantages. It may be surprising, but AV can be very useful in sports photography. With it, you control depth of field, which can be important in sports, to determine what is and is not "in focus." You may want to blur the background and/or have a wide-enough DOF to include multiple players (hard to do if the DOF is 6"). On the other hand, the exact shutter speed often isn't that important, as long as it's fast enough. With TV, the aperture and DOF may vary with every shot, giving a very different "look" to successive shots, a look over which you have no control.


(Here comes the heresy!) I'd also suggest that you try the manual mode. Seriously. One major problem with shooting some sports is that the background can vary a lot in color & brightness and can affect autoexposure. (Backlighting is the classic example: the camera exposes for the bright background, leaving the foreground subject silhouetted.) You can use (and should learn to use, if you don't already) exposure compensation, but it can be a pain and it's easy to forget to change it when shooting rapidly--I know! [:$] If the lighting on the subject stays about the same, it can be better to figure out a good exposure (meter an average scene, take several shots, use the histogram) and dial it in manually. That way, as the background changes, you'll still have good exposure of the main subject. That won't work well if the subjects' lighting can change a lot--e.g., players move from sunlight to shade. I photograph indoor horse shows a lot and have this very problem. Often, there are large open doors that are 3-6 stops brighter than the floor of the arena. If I'm up in the stands, some shots may have a light-colored wall in the background, while others mostly have darker dirt. that can also affect autoexposure by 1-3 stops. I zoom in to an "average" scene (a single horse in the middle of the arena, even a person) to get a starting point, then make a few shots and look at the histogram. If it's all bunched up at the left side, I'll increase the exposure; too much to the right and I decrease the exposure. It's not usually a good idea to primarily use the way the preview image looks on the LCD, as that is affected by the surroundings (ambient light), reflections, and especially the setting you choose for the display brightness.

[SupraSonic]

Sports mode everything will be set esp speed you can see the wheel spinning when you see the finish image and it just a matter your focus lock and ISO speed need to be spot on.