Conquering Futsal Photography: Two Game-Changing Techniques

I’ve grown to love sports photography. In 2021, it began with futsal. I didn’t know anything about the game, but that first time was enjoyable. It taught me a lot. But practice makes perfect, so it was time to do it again.

Later that year, I joined the Futsal Tokyo group again for a game. The venue was Yoyogi Futsal Stadium, 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 difference. My Fujifilm XT-2 didn’t struggle at all. As we were shooting outdoors, white balance was easy, and shutter speeds were high. On my computer, 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 problem centered around focusing. 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 sports photography tips from futsal

Back button focus

I missed shots in the past because I needed to half-press the shutter button to focus the lens. That causes a slight delay until the shutter comes into action. By that time, the action had gone. It was a problem. How could I fix it?

The shutter button needs to be for that purpose only. Put the focus function somewhere else! 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 every time you press the shutter. This has enormous implications. You can shoot, pause, and repeat. 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 many elements. It can be difficult to identify the subject. Separating it from the background is important.
Shooting wide open helps the separation. Other factors include the lens length (longer the better). Zooming in can help.
Get everything right, and the background should be blurred (the famous “bokeh” effect). This technique doesn’t work well with wide-angle lenses.

Practice a lot and you’ll understand how it works.

Conclusion

Next time, I’ll work on back-button focus and separating the subject from the background. If I can nail those two, I might get some winning shots. It’ll lift my sports photography to another level. Anyway, we’ll have to wait and see.

I’m not sure when I’ll shoot the next game, but hopefully soon. Maybe it will be at Yoyogi Futsal Stadium. For those of you who do sports photography, do you have any tips to share?