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Chapter 9 Action and Event Photography
(birds, joggers, bicyclists, children, dogs) that can
be used to practice the follow-focus technique
until it becomes virtually automatic. If you are
using a film camera, much of the practice work
can be done without film, since the object is to
develop proper coordination and motor skills.
Shooting an occasional practice roll of film will
allow you to assess your technique. Digital
cameras, of course, allow you to make a shot
and immediately assess the effectiveness of your
follow-focus technique.
Prefocusing
Prefocusing on a specific spot is a useful
technique when the action follows a regular
pattern or route, as it does in baseball and most
types of racing. All that is necessary is to select a
particular location (for example, first base or the
finish line of the track), sharply focus the camera
there, and wait for your subject to reach that
point, Figure 9-11. This method works best when
it is possible to use a smaller f-stop for increased
depth of field. To compensate for reaction time,
the shutter release should be pressed just before
the subject reaches the point of focus.
shutter finger, however, it is easy to “burn” an
entire 36-exposure roll of film and still fail to
capture a good action photo.
The number of continuous shots taken by a
digital camera is limited by its buffer size—the
amount of information that the camera can hold
internally before writing (transferring) it to the
removable memory device. For most advanced
amateur digital SLRs, the buffer size will allow as
many as 10 continuous shots. Professional models
typically allow a larger number of shots.
Focus Techniques
Cameras with predictive autofocus and
similar sophisticated focusing systems have
made life simpler for sports, action, and wildlife
photographers. Besides improving the percentage
of well-focused shots, autofocus has freed the
photographer from one task, allowing more
attention to be paid to composition, timing, and
other matters. There are, however, a number of
manual focusing techniques that continue to be
valuable tools for the photographer.
Follow Focus
Some autofocus systems react too slowly for
action photography; a photographer skilled in
manual focusing can do the job faster and more
effectively. A common situation in which manual
focus is preferable to slow autofocus is when a
moving object must be kept in focus to allow the
shutter to be pressed at any time.
Known as follow focus, this technique
requires continuous small adjustments by the
photographer to keep the subject sharp. An
example would be “tracking” a goose or duck
coming in for a landing on a body of water.
By keeping the subject in sharp focus, the
photographer can select the exact instant to
release the shutter. (If the camera is equipped
with a motor drive, a number of exposures could
be made during the landing.)
This type of focusing is usually done by
judging the sharpness of the image on the
viewfinder’s ground glass, rather than using the
split-image or microprism portions of the finder.
Determining the amount of lens barrel rotation
needed to keep the focus sharp requires practice.
Visits to a city park will provide many subjects
Figure 9-11. Prefocusing on a specific spot allows you
to capture a well-focused photograph when the subject
reaches the point you have chosen. In this bicycle race
shot, the prefocus spot was the orange traffic cone at
right.