If there is something that your smartphone definitely can’t photograph well, it’s sports. Sports photography is the passion of so many people. Reviews Editor Hillary Grigonis regularly documents her kids playing sports. And we know that lots of you want to share those incredible snippets of action on social media. So if you want to seriously get into photographing sports, just know that your phone just isn’t going to cut it.
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Why Your Smartphone Can’t Do This
Many folks think that if they use the zoom function on their phones that they’ll get great photos. You might be capturing a great moment, but people can’t experience it in absolute clarity. That’s because your phone can only do so much. If it has multiple lenses, then it’s probably doing some sort of zooming, but further zoom will be the same as just zooming in on the photo later on after you’ve shot it.
To put this into better perspective, I want you to go outside and look at the full moon. Can you see every single detail on it with your phone? Of course you can’t! So instead, you need to find a way to get closer. You’ll do that by using a telescope of some sort. But with a dedicated camera, you get can closer to the action and photograph the moon or even sports.
There are some extra elements here to photographing sports though such as background isolation. Your smartphone can do that through portrait mode, but it can’t zoom in, shoot in portrait mode, and track a moving subject well at the same time. However, a dedicated camera can do that pretty easily.
What You Need
Photographing sports can be done with a few different options on the market. Every product that we name here are products that we’ve tested. So we invite you to click through and check out our reviews. If you’re interested, then make a purchase using our links:
Budget: The Sony a6100 is insanely capable at photographing sports; and it’s also coming in at a really great price.
Mid-Tier: The Canon EOS R7 is one of the best cameras that we’ve used in a very long time for sports photography. And believe it or not, it’s also underpriced for what it can do.
Want a Bit More: The Sony a7 IV is one of the most capable cameras on the market today for its price point.
On top of all this, what’s very important here are your lenses. In fact, these are the most critical components. For the price, we really like the Tamron 70-300mm lens. And for Canon, you’re going to have to reach for the Canon 100-400mm if you want a budget option.
Photographing Sports
Here are a few things you need to do to photograph sports if you’re a beginer:
- Set the camera to continuous autofocus or servo autofocus.
- Change the frame rate to continuous.
- Use the center focusing point
- Point said focusing point over the subject. Hold the shutter button down lightly to keep that subject in focus. You’ll get an on-screen confirmation.
- Shoot the photos
Use this method and you’ll be photographing sports in no time! This is all you need to bring home photos that you’ll be super proud of!
Your Phone’s Camera Can’t is budding a series on the Phoblographer dedicated to educating people on how to step up from their smartphone.
