Tennis Photography

[Littlechan]

So I've recently combined my photography with my other line of work, tennis coaching. However, I seem to always get the shutter too fast or too slow :bang: The racquets move pretty quick, even with the juniors. Any advice please?

 

[tdodd]

I've only shot tennis a couple of times, once with some pros on the tennis circuit and once with local club players. Shutter speeds I've used ranged from 1/800 up to 1/6400. Even 1/800 did a pretty good job of limiting racquet head blur - maybe too much.

1/800....

1/6400....

The only reason I was up at 1/6400 was due to dazzling sunshine and shooting an f/2 lens wide open for shallow DOF. It looks to me like 1/800 would not be too far off the mark, with little need to go faster than that unless really wanting to freeze motion almost completely.

Based on my limited experience I guess 1/500 would be the slowest sensible shutter speed unless you are after more creative blur. 1/1000 would probably be ample for juniors.

I'm sure that more experienced tennis shooters can wade in with more solid advice.

 

[kelack]

Moving to Talk Sports

 

[DemiLion]

Read Leon Neal's Wimbledon blog!

 

[kelack]

A link might be helpful then?

 

[kelack]

Found it after a bit of searching, his search box doesn't work for me on his site:

http://www.leonneal.com/blog/tag/wimbledon/

you may find something useful in there Beth, I didn't have much time to have a look through as I have to get ready for rugby.

I'm subscribing to this as a local tennis club have also asked if I want to come along and have a little play for them

Let me know how you get on and thanks Tim, I've also made note of your advice

 

[duncolm]

I've covered the last two Davis Cup matches. I was shooting at 1/800th at f2.8 under the indoor lights, which I found was fine.
It's not fast enough to freeze the racket head and ball at the point of impact if that's what you need, but otherwise it's good for me.

1/800th

 

[DemiLion]

A link might be helpful then?

"Leon Neal Wimbledon" ... first hit on Google.

 

[kelack]

Yup but took me 10 minutes to get to it on my phone. And originally I just searched for Leon Neal.

Glad I don't ask for advice on here tbh