Strategies for capturing action

Action photography isn’t easy. Fast moving subjects present good compositions in fractions of a second, sometimes never to be repeated. The interaction years ago between my great Pyrenees and my newly adopted cocker spaniel puppy, below, shows a fearless pup not concerned at all with a gaping mouth that could shallow him whole! This moment lasted for probably a tenth of a second, and to capture something like this a lot of things had to come together: Hand-eye coordination, the shutter speed decision, the f/stop choice for depth of field, the autofocus mode, the number of focus points, an awareness of the background, the exposure for a white subject, and the frame rate.

What follows is my thought process for rendering fast moving subjects with sharpness. Creatively blurring action shots is a valid approach if that’s what you want, but in my opinion it’s much more rewarding artistically and technically (and more difficult) to capture the action with tack sharp clarity.

1. Frame rate. The first decision is how many frames per second you’ll need to have enough of a variety of images from which to choose. To catch every nuance of movement, I usually opt for the fastest frame rate my camera offers. Having said that, the newest cameras like the Canon R5 and the just announced R7 have 20 and 30 frames per second, respectively. In my opinion, for most action sequences, this is overkill. For small birds in flight, however, that kind of ultra fast frame rate is perfect due to their extremely fast wing beats.

For the egret fishing in a Louisiana swamp on the previous page, I used the mechanical frame rate of 12 fps on the Canon R5. That was enough in this instance. The bird’s ability to grab a fish at warp speed is pretty impressive, and only a fast frame rate allowed me to capture enough images in the sequence to choose a favorite. 2. Shutter speed. The speed of the shutter is critical in producing sharp pictures of a fast moving subject. I’m so tired of taking pictures that are almost sharp, so now I tend to err on the side of very fast shutters.

For birds in flight, my standard shutter speed is 1/3200. Large birds like herons, osprey, eagles, egrets, and hawks are relatively slow fliers, and if the light is diminished and I want to keep the ISO relatively low, I’ll go down to 1/2000. Hummingbirds, on the other hand, flap their wings so fast that shutter speeds on our cameras aren’t sufficient to freeze the birds. Only flash units, when used on reduced power, generate a ‘flash duration’ brief enough to freeze this kind of movement.

My typical shutter for horses at full gallop, and in the case of the white horses of the Camargue in France, below, where they are splash-

Carnival in Venice

February 12 - 18, 2023

ing through a marsh, 1/1250 is sufficient to freeze both the water drops and the moving horses.

The shutter speed you choose often depends on whether or not you are following the subject with your camera. This is made obvious in the photo below of two US Airforce Thunderbirds passing each other during an airshow. I was following the jet on the right, and with a shutter of 1/1600 it’s tack sharp. The jet on the left flew into my frame and it’s slightly blurred because I wasn’t following it. So, in this example, I should have used a shutter speed of 1/2000 or even 1/2500 to have both planes sharp.

On the next page you can see Teddy, my cocker spaniel, as an adult running at full speed down a snow-covered slope. I probably could have used 1/1250 -- the same shutter I use for horses -- but as I mentioned earlier, I like to err on the side of a shutter speed that may be unnecessrily fast if, and only if, I have enough light. In this case, I used 1/2000 and I tracked Teddy with the camera as I shot.

3. Depth of field. I only shoot action with the lens aperture wide open if the light level is low and I need as much light-gathering ability from the lens to give me a fast shutter. However, I prefer to build into the shot a certain amount of depth of field for two reasons. First, subjects have depth -- like a bird with outstretched wings-- and I want as much of the subject in focus and sharp as possible. And second, if the autofocus mechanism isn’t quite fast enough to lock and focus onto a fast moving subject, a certain amount of depth of field might take up the slack. It’s like an insurance policy.

4. Speed of autofocus. How fast your camera can lock focus on a subject is critically important, obviously. If you are using a camera designed and manufactured several years ago, you are handicapped because newer cameras are so fast in their ability to find the subject and focus on it in milliseconds.

If your camera has the relatively new ability to lock focus on an animal’s eye, use it when photographing wildlife and birds. This feature has increased the chances of staying focused on a moving subject. It’s brilliant technology.

One thing you can do to speed up the autofocus is turn off the image stabilization feature in the camera and lens. With fast shutter speeds these are completely unnecessary. My point, though, is that before you can take a picture, the IS mechanisms will function. This takes a certain amount of time, and even if it’s milliseconds, this could cause you to miss the peak action of a moving subject.

In addition, IS (or VR) uses a significant amount of battery to function. Action photography drains batteries quickly simply because our

cameras are totally electronic, and shooting so many frames over and over again demands a lot of power. Turning off the IS is also an important way to conserve the battery.

5. Auto ISO. An important part of my strategy in photographing subjects in motion is to use auto ISO along with manual exposure mode. In doing so, I can specifically choose my shutter speed (without the concern it will vary according to the light) and lens aperture. As the light varies, the ISO varies.

The only downside to this is in low light environments the ISO will be high. I never put a cap on this, however, because if it’s relatively dark and the ISO needs to be elevated, limiting it will cause underexposure. With the advanced noise-reducing software now available, a high ISO is much less of an issue than it used to be. §