Lessons

Lesson Info

Sports or Action Mode

Now sports most most likely when you flip to it it's going to basically do a few different things number one you're telling the camera that was shooting fast action subjects so the camera and try and keep the shutter speed up high enough to freeze the action so it's going to use a combination of basically the aperture and your eyes so to get to the proper exposure while keeping the shutter speed a bit higher? In addition, you're telling the camera that the subject is going to be moving and so it's going to try and use different focus techniques to get the subject to be actually well in focus first of all, let's talk about the light and the setup here now what we have is we're shooting basically in this direction we'd be going against the sun or basically our scene is going to be backlit in this direction right here we're going to shooting with the sun I'm going to show you what's going to look like and what the differences are and why we're going to shoot against the sun okay, so let m...

e go ahead just take a portrait will quick event believe it can you guys just stand right here for one quick second now notice how we have the sun coming directly in right now and, uh well, we get a beautiful directional light to this ah to the scene, but it's still going to end up looking rather flat? In addition, it's a little bit spotty, depending on how they're running. If they're running through this area, these tree leaves that basically casting spotty light all over them, the backgrounds not going to kind of full of light, you're going dark areas and kind of some light areas, and really, frankly, with it being flat lit like this, flatley is when the light's, coming directly in the direction of your shooting, we're going toe lack a lot of really contrast and kind of that dynamic lighting that's going to really make the scene pop and give us an extra dimension, so let's, go ahead and flip him around now, so I'm gonna have you guys stand on this side. I'm going to try not to shoot directly the sense I'm actually gonna get low, so I can use one of them to block the sun just so that we have this for illustration. Actually, you know what we'll do is just turn to the side a little bit that's a little better. Okay, so what you can see here is once their backs are to the light, we have this beautiful hair light on the back of him, ok, so that we have this nice dimension, the scene you can see all the other objects in the scene are kind of being backlit, the leaves, the trees, everything has a great look to it. Even the ask paul itself has extra texture and dimension when we're shooting against the light like this. Okay, guys, here's one quick little tim shooting with or against the light isn't right or wrong either way, it's simply going to give you a different look no in general when you're shooting with the direction it aside, you're going to have a scene that has higher contrast in a flatter, overall look, and it just isn't gonna have us much dynamic range no shooting against the direction of the light that means you're seeing will be backlit. We'll be creating edge lighting on your objects and the sky will be brighter and blown out unless, of course, you're adding additional light into the shadows and contrast will be lower if you've got light hitting, your legs are flaring into your lens now, again, neither of these options shooting with the light or against it neither one were incorrect, they're just different and it'll yield different. Look, all you do is understand the difference. If you do, you'll be able to choose the best angle and direction of light that fits the look that you're aiming for for your particular image no for the scene paice choices against the light toe add a little more texture dimension an interest with honestly actually agree with and it's better I think for this scene the only problem is dealing with the deep shadows which you'll see in just a moment so we're going to do it so let's go ahead and we're gonna have you guys set up right now my my fifty million lens I'll probably switch that just one moment but what I want you guys to do is just go right to the middle of the road and just start running towards me together in just one second okay so what we're gonna do is I'm just going to take this shot as they're running I'm not going to consider my composition or anything so girls just start running towards me now one of the things sports action load is doing is it's actually shooting in burst mode so I can get several shots at once okay that's perfect girls you were awesome come back over here okay so when I can see here is that well my compositions aren't really great I've basically shot bull's eyes the entire time also the camera's having a little bit of a hard time I see because what's happened is that the sun has come over the mountain and it's basically casting a very bright light onto the road let's step out off the road so we don't get hit so the problem with this is that it becomes extremely bright and with this brightness it's going to be difficult for the camera to get the right exposure because well, the camera trying to balance the entire scene and we have these very strong highlights on the ground so what I probably going to do for my final scene? Well, what we're definitely do is shoot in manual mode to get the exact exposure that we need to make sure that our subjects are correctly exposed, but first of all, we kind of need to get a better composition so let's do that first let's actually think about what we're going for now what I want here, what you can see is we have this beautiful road that's kind of just going straight and then bending to the right we have these great columns here and all these columns they kind of just dot right along the side of the road and it creates a beautiful line we can use this kind of stuff in our compositions so if I were to use it, what I want to do is basically have well, maybe the road kind of bending from the outside the frame and then coming in and we have basically this wood piece kind of end towards the right of the frame now what I'm doing is I'm just tilting the camera a slight bit just to get this last little wood column right here in my frame okay, so in the corner the frame so it kind of just end the compositional bit also the tilt is going to be really nice visit called dutch angle, by the way and dutch angle works really well in certain cases, but you want to be careful not to overuse that dutch angle when you twist the camera too much ends up looking like the world's falling over general when we twist, we wanted really just twist to emphasize a line or two emphasize a particular moment, but if you have kind of strong horizon lines in this scene, it really doesn't work that well, but we don't in this scene we want to just use it kind of exaggerate the line of the road and that's why we're going to doing okay, so girls perfect all right, go ahead, start running beautiful that was perfect. We have a much stronger image now, okay, so we've still let the camera handle everything. We just decided what we're going to do for our lighting for a composition, obviously if they're running and be really difficult to do anything for lighting and this hard to have an assistant actually run run along the side of them with like, say, a reflectors, I'm going like that which we don't have and we're not going to set up flash and stuff because this is photography one on one all right, but what I want to do now is that I can use the dynamic range of this camera. This is the dvd two hundred. We have a huge dynamic range that this sensor can capture, so what we're gonna do is we're shooting an rov course raw plus j peg, what I'm gonna do is shoot in manual and we're going to get the exact exposure so we can get as much of the highlights and the shadow detail is possible. So, girls, we'll have you do it, just go stand over in that area where you're approximately running, I'll tell you where to stop right there and then turn perfect. We're going to have them in position and basically was going to use them to kind of get my overall meeting settings. So what I'm gonna do right now is that poopy thing about the nikon cameras, or at least this d fifty two hundred, is that we don't have a live view that allows us to preview the exposure of the image. Okay, so we have to use the in camera meter system, but that's okay, because we can still read the history ram weaken cr highlights after the fact, so I'm just going to use the in camera hissed a gram, and this is what I'm gonna do let's go for focus mode I'm going to place it on let's go single serve oh that's going to be that single shot focus mode and then for the area mode we're going to go single point we're not going to use an area or anything like that is one on one single point over them for meat oring well, let's use center waited that's not really gonna matter because we're gonna engage in any way in this scene okay? And then I think everything else is good. Okay, let's, go ahead and look, they're here actually I do want to set my s oh, my I suppose right now four hundred I'm going to leave it at one hundred and see if I can get to the right exposure because you know, if I can get the right exposure I saw one hundred we have a broader dynamic range and that's what we need that's what we're going for here we're getting this beautiful light that's coming directly onto me now and khun maybe use part of that as a little the composition getting a nice little flare coming through the trees I think it'll look really great and also I'm going to switch on tio probably my eighty five in just one second my on the fifty right now still yeah, one thing I wanted to mention to you guys is that the eighty five is a beautiful lens for well, for scenes like this because it really allows us to compress the background right now that fifty I might use it for more of a tall shot, but then I can use the eighty five to really get this nice ro of columns very much exaggerated. It pulls the background up closer with that additional focal length and so forth. Okay, let's, go ahead and get us a little meter on this seen it right now it shows that I'm way over exposed cause I'm not one fiftieth of a second, so I'm gonna go ahead and drop this all the way down to around one eight hundredth of a second. Okay, so let's discuss for a moment that changes in pi setting from auto to manual and how it's going to affect the image. The first biggest changes in the d o f or depth of field hi opened is aperture to f too, and what that's going to do is create more separation from the subject and the background as the background falls into blur quicker. The only trick here is that since the subjects are moving, that shallow aperture means that you need to shoot extra because there's going to be out of focus shots as they're moving towards the camera now pie mentioned that he was dropping the iso toe one hundred he did this to preserve dynamic range and color with the camera is a one hundred were able to pull out more shadows and revealed better color in post production now lastly the shutter was adjusted to one eight hundred of a second to adjust for overall exposure making sure that the shadows were in clipped and that the highlights weren't too bright again we see that by looking at the history graham from the shot as the shadows air pushed all the way against the left and highlights are pushed against the right with the maximum amount of detail preserved so already that manual shot looks quite a bit stronger now take a look at the manual shot before and after post processing and look at how much we were able to push and reveal inside of that photo again this is where we can truly bring out the best inner images by shooting in manual mode and this is what we mean when we tell you shoot with your final vision of the image in mind it's a rap girls we got our shot it looks really awesome you guys feel like you got to get a workout was like a mile two miles it's only like that we ran into a few times alright so great job of the girls we got some really nice johnson hopefully you'll have a good understanding of how the sports action mode works essentially the sports action one is keeping this shutter speed obsolete we confer freeze our motion freeze our action, it's keeping the aperture and the size o it is setting to get the proper exposure now and seems like this again. You're always better off going to manual because we can perfectly set in the shutter speed that we need the after that, we need the eyes so that we need to maximize, not on ly well, our freezing our subjects, but also to maximize the scene detail to make sure that we have all of our highlights, we haven't blown out any highlights we haven't clipped to much more shadows, so that's it for this tutorial. Now what I want you guys to do is go out and use the sports action mode to shoot anything, sports or action. Alright, so make sure you get out there, shoot a skateboarder, shoot a surfer, she running girls so long as you have their permission just go out and start shooting now, when you do start looking at what this mode is actually doing and look at where it kind of falls short, basically in certain scenes where you want to get certain effects, or maybe what you're not getting the right exposure because, well, you're using a unique composition that the camera can't essentially kind of well. Figure out once he played around a little bit, switch over to manual and get the same shot and notice how you have a little more control over your exposure, the exact shutter speed and everything, and notice how everything's going to be more consistent. Once you guys get a cool sports or action shot that you want to show off, posted to estar longe dot com, tell us all about it. How you shot it, what you decided due for your composition, and you're lighting and so forth. All right, we'll see you on the next video.