Capture Summer Action

Summer is action time! Baseball games, fun on the beach, and trips to the park are all great opportunities for picture taking. But, they each require you to photograph fast-moving action.

Getting good action pictures is easy if you get to know your camera’s settings and follow a few simple rules.

Manage shutter lag

Fast-action photography means freezing the action so that you can get sharp, clean, crisp shots. But, in order to that, you may need to manage your camera’s shutter lag. Shutter lag is the time between when you press the shutter button and when the camera takes the picture.

All cameras have shutter lag, some more than others. If the shutter lag on your camera is significant and is causing you to miss some great shots, there are some things that you can do to minimize the problem.

But, before we talk about techniques to reduce shutter lag, let’s first look at the causes of it. After you press your camera’s shutter button, the camera has to focus the lens, measure the white balance and prepare the sensor to capture the image. That’s a lot to do!

So, a general rule of thumb for minimizing shutter lag is to avoid shooting in Full Auto mode.

Instead of using your camera’s auto mode for white balance, set your camera’s white balance control to one of its preset values manually. Most cameras let you choose from several presets such as daylight, indoor, sunset, and cloudy. So, just choose whichever setting is appropriate for your situation before you start shooting. That way, your camera doesn’t have to take the time to measure and calculate the white balance using the automatic setting.

And, consider switching off the autofocus mode and manually focusing instead. Or, if you don’t feel comfortable with that, keep autofocus on, and prefocus. To prefocus your camera, press the shutter button about halfway down just before you actually want to take the shot. By doing this, your camera will focus itself, ready to take the shot as soon as you press the shutter button down the rest of the way.

Turn off your flash

Make sure to turn off the flash if you’re outside or in a well lit room. Most digital cameras will use the flash mode unless you turn it off. So, if you don’t need flash, turn it off and take one more step out of the process.

Use burst mode

Another way to get great fast-action pictures is to use burst mode. This is a mode on the camera that allows you to shoot a series of photos continuously so that you can take multiple pictures in quick succession. Then, begin shooting just before the event you’re trying to capture and continue shooting through that moment.

Take lots of photos!

And finally, takes lots of photos! One of the best things about digital photography is that memory is virtually unlimited. The more shots you take, the better the chance that you’ll get the shot you want. And in the digital age, you can just erase the ones that don’t work out.

Happy Scrapping!

Mary

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