Your Phone's Camera Can't

Your Phone’s Camera Can’t: Photographing Sports Like Professional Photographers

Chris Gampat
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08/17/2022
3 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Canon EOS R7 first impressions sample images 4.51-5000s400 3

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.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.