How do you pick the right shutter speed for baseball photography? Below I walk through a few attempts at making the most out of a bland situation.
Shooting baseball at noon sucks. At community college fields, which are usually barren of any big Green Monsters or massive billboards to create shadows, midday lighting often leaves game photos looking flat.
That was the case this Sunday when I went to shoot the Rowan College of South Jersey Cumberland (that’s a mouthful!) and Mercer County Community College (that too!) baseball game. Occasionally, a cumulonimbus drifted in front of the sun and added some much appreciated shadow. But by and large, most of the photos I shot came out looking like this:
By about 1:30 p.m. however, the sun had shifted just enough to provide the pitcher some backlighting when I stood inside first base. That’s when it clicked – forget about what my light meter is telling me, why not shoot underexposed?
Much better! I’m always incredibly envious of those dynamically lit MLB photos. You know, the ones where the lighting differences between the field and the crowd are so drastic that the players feel like they’re larger than life? While I would have loved to have caught the ball fizzing out of the pitcher’s hand, this photo was a jolt of positivity amidst a day that was otherwise rather bland.
What did I do differently? Well, cranking the shutter speed from 1/2000 of a second to 1/6400 was a great start. At times, I considered dropping my ISO, but I wanted to ensure my shutter moved fast enough to really freeze any motion.
Conversely, I did play around with a slow shutter. The following photo was caught at 1/40 of a second as I used the third base fencing as a makeshift tripod when I dragged my camera along with the pitcher through his wind-up.
My hard drive is loaded with errant attempts at this shot. Finding the right amount of camera movement was a real challenge – I can’t imagine trying a shot like this on anyone but a pitcher. Ultimately, I tended to play more with the faster shutter speed than slower.
I should also briefly, shout out the lens I used – Sigma’s 100-400 f/4.5-6.3. Having left my job that allowed me access to Canon’s 1998 EF 100-400 (the one with the push barrel!), I was quite happy with the image quality of this $800 lens.
All things considered, I’m looking forward to my next midday game. I’ll take a nice, May 7pm game any day, but shooting with a faster than usual shutter speed for baseball is helping to assuage my early afternoon fears.
