Guide to Sports Photography

This comprehensive guide covers the sports photography basics, what you need to know and the gear you’ll need to start creating top-level sports photography. You’ll also get to hear from the experts, with dozens of our deep-dive interviews with sports photographers whose knowledge will help you hone your skills. 

From starting out in sports photography and covering local games to moving up to the big leagues, your sports photography journey starts here. 

This article covers: 

• What Is Sports Photography?

• Top Five Tips for Sports Photography

• Camera Settings for Sports Photography

• Best Camera Gear for Sports Photography

• FAQs 

• Learn from the Experts

What Is Sports Photography?

Sports photography is all about capturing images of athletes in action. With hundreds of sub-genres, covering just as many different amateur and professional sports, you’ll need to think fast, act fast and stay versatile. Sports photography also explores behind-the-scenes of the sport. From the training-ground exercises and staff, to the matchday officials and fans, sports photography covers both the small moments and the buzz behind the big games.

Sports photography can tell bigger stories, too. Truly iconic sports photography, from images of Jesse Owens in 1936 to those of Megan Rapinoe in 2019, sports photographers can reflect on societal issues through their work. 

You’ll need to walk before you can run. And you’ll need to know the basics before you can capture your first great sporting image. While many photographers specialise in covering just a few different sports, most will have well-rounded knowledge, understanding and practical experience capturing different scenarios. This guide will help provide you with that knowledge. 

Top Five Tips for Sports Photography

Paul Hazelwood is the official club photographer for the Premier League’s Brighton & Hove Albion F.C. His images, which have charted Brighton’s rise to the top flight of English football, are used by a range of outlets from international publications to Football Manager. We asked Paul to share his top five sports photography tips.

1. Be Prepared

You may have the best photographic equipment in the world, or just be starting out. If you’re planning on becoming a sports photographer, you will be outside more often than not. So think carefully about protecting your gear—as well as yourself.

Sports cameras and lenses can be waterproof, but usually only to a point. So purchase and always carry suitable watertight camera covers. And if you are using a laptop on the touchline, ensure you have adequate protection for that too.

Finally, think about yourself. It is much harder to capture the key moments of the match if you are soaked to the skin and shaking with cold. A good set of waterproof trousers and an overcoat are essential.

2. Study your Sport

If you are planning on distributing to the national or local press, don’t just turn up and shoot. Capturing the story of the match is never just about 90 minutes of action. 

Prior to the match, get on the laptop or tablet and look for players, coaching staff and owners who are in the news. The club you are covering may have celebrity fans, often in the corporate seating. There might be a supporters demonstration with banners and placards. You might spot interesting fans in the crowd, perhaps face painted, or hats and scarves covered in pin badges. Do your homework!

3. Get Familiar with your Settings

It is nigh-on impossible to give you a one-size-fits-all set of camera settings. There are too many elements to consider. If you are working under floodlights, conditions will be consistent. But if you are covering a 3 pm kick-off in winter months, you may start in daylight and end under floodlights. You need to understand enough about ISO, shutter speed and aperture to be able to adjust and keep your picture quality high throughout.

With football photography, I always shoot on Manual. I don’t like to shoot below 1/1250 or above 1/2500. The faster the shutter speed, the more will be sharp. The lower you go, you’ll start to notice limbs and footballs losing their sharpness.

I prefer to set the aperture to f/2.8, which is the lowest my lens selections for sport will go. This ensures the subject pops in the picture, and the background is not too distracting with a nice bokeh.

Cameras can produce great images at high ISO settings, but the lower you can go, the less noise and grain you will see. I try to stay below ISO 4000. But sometimes, if you are covering a match at a lower level or at a training complex, you do have to compromise a bit of grain in order to still freeze the action.

4. Bring the Right Equipment

Assuming you are using a 300mm or 400mm telephoto lens, a quality monopod will be invaluable. Not only will it stop your arms from aching, but it is so much easier to brace for the shot and avoid unnecessary camera shake. Good lenses have image stabilisation, which helps greatly, but discount the monopod at your peril. 

Another great piece of kit to carry is an adjustable seat. You might be sat behind LED advertising boards, which can differ in height from stadium to stadium, or the supporters directly behind you might be at a lower elevation. They have as much right to enjoy the match as you do to shoot it, so always give them consideration and set your seat to the lowest possible height. The supporters will thank you. And, of course, the lower you get, the more dynamic your shots will look!

5. Look for Emotion and Work Quickly

If a player is shooting at goal and you have them firmly in your sights, be brave and stay on them. It’s obvious that you want to capture the celebrations and emotions. But equally poignant are the screams of frustration, head in hands or slapping of grass when the ball—for whatever reason—just does not find the net.

Keep shooting. You can always delete frames, you can never retake them. 

If a goal celebration comes your way, work quickly, and know when to switch from your telephoto to your second or third body with a shorter zoom. This is a fine art and takes practice.  But if you are comfortable with how your equipment is set up, eventually, muscle memory will take over, and it will become second nature.

Camera Settings for Sports Photography

For sports photography, your camera settings will depend on the sport, the lighting conditions and your creative preferences. In general, for sports photography, you’ll want to use a fast shutter speed—and a high ISO to compensate for that. If you’re happy with a shallow depth of field, you should also open your aperture as wide as possible to increase the amount of light that reaches your sensor. A good starting point would be 1/1000, f/2 and auto ISO with an upper sensitivity of 2000.  

Now it’s time to put the theory into practice.

Auto Mode

Right at the start, you’ll probably keep your camera on fully automatic mode. Your camera will automatically set the aperture, ISO and shutter speed to create a well-exposed image—and allow you to concentrate on your composition and framing. However, auto mode presents a few challenges for sports photography. For example, as you can’t control your shutter speed, your subjects may appear blurry. While you can still use auto modes as a fallback or a last resort, you’ll want to move onto the semi-auto modes fairly quickly if you want to improve your sports photography.

Semi-auto Modes

So, once you’ve got to grips with your gear, try using one of the semi-auto modes. With practice, as you deepen your understanding of the exposure triangle, you can move on fully manual. But first, we need to understand how these modes work. 

With sports photography, like most other genres, it’s key to understand the exposure triangle. Every photo is created by exposing your camera’s sensor to light in three ways—using aperture, shutter speed and ISO. When you change one setting, you must change the others to compensate. Or, you can ask your camera to do this for you automatically using the semi-auto modes. Read more about these below, and learn how each one can change your image.

Aperture

Aperture controls the amount of light that reaches your sensor. It does this by changing the diameter of the opening within your lens. The wider your aperture, the more light enters through your lens to reach the sensor. Aperture is measured using an f-number. The smaller the f-number, the wider your aperture and the brighter your exposure. 

Learn more about the exposure triangle.

Shallow Depth of Field

Aperture also affects depth of field. A wide aperture will create a shallow depth of field, which helps isolate the in-focus athlete by making them stand out against the out-of-focus background. This also reduces the impact of any distractive background elements by throwing them out of focus. 

Depth of field is also affected by the focal length of your lens. All other factors being equal, a lens with a longer focal length (say, 400mm) will create a shallower depth of field than a shorter focal length (like a 50mm). Depth of field is also affected by the distance between you and the subject. The closer the subject, the shallower the depth of field.

Deep Depth of Field

To focus on athletes both near and far simultaneously, you’ll need to increase your depth of field by narrowing your aperture. This is tricky, especially when you want to freeze them all with a fast shutter speed, so your ISO will need to do a lot of heavy lifting.

Aperture Priority mode

To change your aperture, set your camera to Aperture Priority mode (‘A’ or ‘Av’ on most cameras), and your camera will automatically adjust the ISO and shutter speed to create a well-exposed image. However, as Aperture Priority mode doesn’t allow you to control your shutter speed, it usually isn’t the best choice for sports photography. You’ll normally want a faster shutter speed to freeze the action. So let’s leave Aperture Priority mode for now.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed controls the length of time your sensor is exposed to light. Each time you press the shutter release button, your shutter opens and closes. The length of time between your shutter opening and closing is called the shutter speed, and is measured in seconds—or fractions of a second. The bigger the fraction, the more time your sensor is exposed to light and the brighter your exposure. 

During the opening and close of the shutter, your sensor will record any movement as motion blur. This movement includes both the subject and the camera itself.

Freeze the Action

When photographing sports, which often has fast-moving subjects, you’ll usually want to keep your shutter speed as quick as possible—indicated by a smaller fraction of a second—in order to freeze the action, reduce motion blur and produce sharp imagery of the athletes. 

Your minimum shutter speed should depend on the sport. For slower-moving athletes, your lowest shutter speed should be around 1/500. For motorsports, you’ll want to use 1/1000 and above.

Get Creative with Motion Blur

There are exceptions. If you’d like to experiment with motion blur, you can use slower shutter speeds. In the image below, Ryu Voelkel employs controlled use of a slower shutter speed—of 1 second—to create the the movement and speed of the athletes. Note how the pitch markings are still relatively free of motion blur.

Shutter Priority Mode

To change your shutter speed, set your camera to Shutter Priority mode (‘S’) and your camera will automatically change the aperture and ISO to create a well-exposed image. However, as Shutter Priority mode doesn’t allow you to control aperture, you’ll have limited control of your depth of field. But, for sports photography beginners, Shutter Priority mode is still a good choice as it’ll ensure your images are sharp. 

ISO

ISO controls your sensor’s sensitivity to light. Back in the days of film photography, any roll of film had a specific ISO value and didn’t change. But these days, digital cameras allow you to change that sensitivity. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive your sensor is to light and the brighter your exposure. In extreme low-light situations, avoid using an ISO that is too high or you’ll introduce too much digital ‘noise’. 

Auto ISO Mode

To avoid digital noise, most cameras will allow you to use Auto ISO mode with upper and lower ISO limits. You can therefore control your aperture and shutter speed, while your camera controls the ISO within the acceptable parameters.

Continuous Shooting Mode

Continuous Shooting Mode, or Burst Mode, tells your camera to take multiple images in quick succession. For sports photography, this mode is particularly useful as it gives you a number of options for each scene. When it comes to capturing pivotal moments in sports, the difference between a good photo and a great one can be milliseconds—and burst mode has that covered for you.

RAW

Remember to set your camera to capture RAW files, which contain far more data than JPEGs. More data means greater opportunities to edit your images in post. Some cameras will allow you to shoot JPEGs and RAW files simultaneously, so you can use the low-weight JPEGs to review your images and then keep only the best RAW files. This will help speed up your post-production process. Remember to get a high-capacity SD card, or carry a few spares, because RAW files will fill up your storage media rather quickly. 

Best Cameras for Sports Photography

Your choice of camera gear will depend on the sport, your creative preferences and your budget. You’ll want a camera with fast shutter speeds and high ISO capabilities. A full-frame sensor is usually best, for improved image quality, but you can still capture good sports photography using a crop-sensor camera. DSLRs offer longer battery life, while mirrorless cameras offer the latest features at the cost of battery life—but you can always bring multiple batteries. 

Sports photography usually involves telephoto lenses—either primes or zooms—to help get you closer to the action, while remaining on the sidelines. Many photographers bring a range of lenses with different focal lengths, and will sometimes have dedicated cameras attached to each lens for faster and more efficient shooting. 

So, which lenses? First, work out the average distance between you and the athletes. This will impact your choice of focal length—table tennis, for example, will require a shorter focal length than, say, motorsports. You can then get a zoom or telephoto zoom lens. These allow you to change your focal length without changing your lens. Later, you can review your images’ metadata and establish your most commonly used focal length—and then get a prime of that focal length.

At first, the most expensive camera equipment won’t necessarily help you take better pictures. You’ll probably pay over the odds for features you might never use. Instead, start with a generalised setup that can do most things well enough. Then, as you find your feet and work out your requirements, you can trade in and upgrade accordingly.

Want to learn more about trading in at MPB? Check out sports photographer Richard Pelham on trading cameras.

Best APS-C DSLR: Nikon D300S

APS-C camera offers the best value for money for sports photography beginners. You’ll likely upgrade to a full-frame camera as you learn, but APS-C DSLRs are still a great starting off point. 

The Nikon D300s will offer up to 7 frames per second—and up to 8 fps if you add the Nikon MB-D10 Battery Grip—up to 8/000. The D300S offers similar specs and price-point to the Canon EOS 7D.

Best Full-frame DSLR: Canon EOS 1DX Mark II

As the traditional choice for sports, many photographers remain married to their DSLR setups—and with good reason. Super reliable, fantastic battery life and ultra-affordable, DSLRs are still a great choice for sports photography. 

The Canon EOS 1DX Mark II is a veritable stalwart of the pro world. Its phenomenal ergonomics make its considerable weight feel great in the hand. Capable of capturing 14 frames per second from its full-frame 20.2-megapixel sensor, the Canon EOS 1DX Mark II cemented Canon’s reputation for creating top-tier pro gear.

Best Full-frame Mirrorless: Sony A9

As growing numbers of sports photographers move to mirrorless, the Sony A9 is surely the camera that turned the tide. This was the first mirrorless camera to really challenge pro DSLRs. The original Sony A9 represents great value for money and still holds its own in the pro market. 

To get the full picture of the best gear for sports photography, take a look at our comprehensive Top 12 Camera Setups for Sports Photography.

Best Lenses for Sports Photography

As long as its the same brand, you can use pretty much any full-frame DSLR lens on any APS-C or full-frame camera. You can also mount them to mirrorless cameras with an adaptor. So, if you’re just starting out, full-frame DSLR lenses can be worth the investment. 

DSLR Lenses

For instance, with Canon lenses, we would recommend the classic trifecta of the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L III USM, for super wide shot needs. The Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L II USM is standard, of course. But the sports photographer's workhorse, which is a must-have, is the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS III USM. All three of these premium zoom range lenses will be available for all other brands. 

Mirrorless lenses

If you’re using a Sony full-frame mirrorless camera, you can’t go wrong with the f/2.8 GM lenses. There’s the Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM, FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS and FE 400mm f/2.8 GM OSS. If you want to save some money and get a single, versatile zoom lens, the Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS offers a useful range of focal lengths—but you’ll have to compromise on aperture.

Accessories

Camera remotes can be really useful, especially when you need to keep your distance from the action. For example, one for a camera that is set up behind the goal. 

While some sports photographers use a tripod or monopods, usually the shutter speeds will mean you don’t need one.

Meanwhile, teleconverters and extension tubes give sports photographers valuable extra reach—a 1.4x gets 40% more focal length, while a 2x doubles it. This allows tighter shots of distant athletes and more dynamic in-the-action views. However, there are compromises involved. 

FAQs 

Is It Hard To Become a Sports Photographer?

All you need to become an amateur sports photographer is a camera and access to people playing sports. Becoming a professional or semi-pro sports photographer is a little harder—but still easier than you might think. 

Once you’ve grasped the photography basics, head to your local sports club, or ask your friends. As long as you ask permission, people are usually happy for you to cover their amateur league matches. Return every week and practice. You don’t need big-name stars to hone your skills. Eventually, once your images are up to scratch, you’ll have built up a social media presence and a portfolio. These should demonstrate your ability to take a great photo. 

You can send this to your local sports teams and offer to take photos for them. Keep applying and offering, and eventually, someone will take you up on your offer. From there, the sky’s the limit.

What Is the Average Salary for a Sports Photographer?

In the UK, the average salary for a sports photographer is £31,000 (according to Glassdoor). As a professional sports photographer, your salary will depend on your experience, expertise and arena. And, as with any career, photographers from underrepresented groups will often face pay inequality. For example, in general, women in photography earn on average 40% less than their male counterparts.

If you’re just starting out and covering local football teams on Saturdays, then you probably won’t earn much at all. Become a Premier League official club photographer, for example, and your salary should be well above the national average.

Thank you for reading the MPB Guide to Sports Photography, our comprehensive look at how to create sports photography, camera recommendations, advice and interviews with experts.

Looking for more sports photography content?