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Futsal photo lessons at Yoyogi Futsal Stadium
In 2021, I photographed futsal for the first. I didn’t know anything about the sport, but I enjoyed the experience immensely. It taught me a lot. Now it was time to go back and practice what I learned from my first effort.
Later that year, I joined the Futsal Tokyo group again for a game. The venue was Yoyogi Futsal Stadium, which is across the road from the NHK studios in Shibuya. With cloudless skies, it was a great day for sports photography.
And that time, I got the bonus of shooting during the day! That made a huge difference. My Fujifilm XT-2 didn’t struggle at all. As we were shooting outdoors, white balance was easy, and shutter speeds were very high. Once I uploaded the pics to my computer, very few adjustments in Adobe Lightroom were needed.
My day’s target was to apply lessons from my first time with futsal. Instead of standing, I sat down for the entire game and took my pictures. It made a difference. The players look much better in the frames. That was one lesson learned and will stay with me forever.
My next problems centered around focusing. Either the camera locked onto something I didn’t want, or it kept hunting. In the end, I lost many potentially good pictures. How could I fix this? Once again, YouTube had the answers!
New lessons learned for sports photography
Back button focus
In the past, I missed many shots because I needed to half-press the shutter button to focus the lens, then press the shutter. By the time I did that, the action had gone. It was a major problem because I was missing shots.
The shutter button needs to be for that purpose only. Put the focus function somewhere else! In my case, I assigned it to another spare button on the back of the camera (hence the name back button focus!). Why? Here are my reasons:
- The camera won’t hunt for focus when you press the shutter. This has enormous implications. You can shoot and pause, then shoot again. If the focal plane remains the same, you can pause and put the camera down. When you ready it to take the next picture, it’ll still be focused.
- But remember to change the camera into continuous focus mode. That will let you track your subject. That is great for sports photography!
- Back button focus is all about efficiency. If you can gain a second or even half a second, it might help you capture a fantastic shot! I’ll be testing it the next time I shoot sports.
Shoot with your lens wide open
- Sometimes the scene can have a lot of elements in it. There can be so much in the frame that it is difficult to identify the subject. And that means the background needs more separation.
- You can get the separation by shooting wide open. Use a longer lens, zoom in, and use those small stop numbers like f/1.2 or f/2.8. This will help give bokeh in pictures (depending on how far the subject is away). Be aware this technique won’t work well with wide-angle lenses unless you are extremely close!
Wrapping up
Next time, I’ll be working on two things, back button focus and separation of subject and background. If I can nail those two, I might get some winning shots. We’ll have to wait and see.
I’m not sure when I’ll be shooting the next game, but hopefully soon. Maybe it will be at Yoyogi Futsal Stadium, but I don’t know. If you have questions or comments, please leave them below. And for those of you who do sports photography, do you have any tips you’d care to share with us?
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