Nikon D5, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR, ISO 560, ƒ/4.5, 1/4000

Today I had a lot of fun shooting the Hawaii High School Rodeo at Parker Ranch Arena in Waimea on the Big Island of Hawaii.

It was fun because I brought the camera and lens that let me get the action shots I wanted. I didn’t bring my long glass, but rather what I call my go-to lens for capturing just about anything. That lens is the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. In this first photo, I shot it at the focal length of 58mm. I wanted to capture the girl doing barrel racing but also capture the Parker Ranch sign.

I was introduced to Cowboy art by Don Rutledge. We went to the Cowboy museum in Oklahoma City, where I saw the work of Remington and Russell for the first time. They not only painted but did sculptures.

With the help of Remington and Russell’s work, Don taught me that expression makes the photo. The expressions of the animals and the people in the picture frame.

What I love about Rodeos is that the cowgirls and cowboys must work as a team with animals. The more they know about their animal and how it likes to get clues from the people on what to do, the better the show.

I set up the Nikon D5 as I do for all sports shoots. Here is the blog post that goes into a lot of detail about all the settings.

Now to me, the crazy sport is bull riding. These bulls weigh as much as a car and can crush you just as quickly as a car. That is why the sport is just about 8 seconds long. If you can ride for 8 seconds, you compete.

Most of the time, I see the bull riders being kicked off the bull in less than 8 seconds.

The cowgirls have Girl’s Cutting, where they are to lasso the cow. Two of the cowgirls did so in less than 4 seconds. WOW! I was impressed at these high school girls being so good.

The cowboys have a similar event where they lasso the cow, and then, with a teammate, they wrestle the cow to the ground and tie their feet. This is a skill they use in the fields to capture the cows to give the shots, brand them, and do other things to take care of their herd.

It was just fun to see the high school kids having so much fun and learning a skill while playing games.

I was always greeted with a big smile when asking the cowgirls if I could take a picture of them with their horses. They were proud of their horses and the bond they had built with them.

I cannot recommend enough finding a rodeo near you and spending the time to capture the action with your camera.

Another Friday Night Lights game at Roswell High School’s Ray Manus Stadium. Roswell was up 49 – 0 by halftime, so I left early.

I am pleased with the dynamic range of the Nikon D5 for shooting at such a high ISO of 64000.

The files are suitable, from the highlights to the shadows with detail. The only place was in the shadows inside the helmets where no light shone.

Even in the end zone, when the quarterback looked up for his receiver, I got some great light inside the helmet.

I shot from the end zone, sitting on a small folding stool for all these photos. I was at the kneeling height, putting me about at the belt line of the players.

Once the sun went down, I took a custom white balance with the ExpoDisc.

The latest version of the ExpoDisc 2.0 comes with warming filters. They are slightly cyan in color and have different densities to let you pick how much you want to warm up your image. So without them, you get a pure 18% grey; by adding these, you warm up the photo.

You just put the warming gel in the front of the ExpoDisc and then take your reading. This way, you can keep consistent warming to all your photos.

So what should you do? I would advise always doing custom. If you shot it RAW, You can change it later using Adobe Lightroom.

To the left is the pull-down menu available in Adobe Lightroom if you shot it RAW. These are very similar to the presets on your camera.

Sometimes, the perfect custom white balance may not be your preference.

Presets in Nikon D5

Check your manual for your camera because this is for the Nikon D5. You can adjust using presets for white balance somewhere in your menu.

On my Nikon D5, in the menu for White Balance, you can choose up to five different presets for fluorescent. Also, there is a selection of sodium vapor and High temp. Mercury-vapor. I have found a significant problem trying this method; it isn’t easy to pick the right color because the monitor on the back of the camera isn’t that easy to see color in all situations.

Fluorescent lamps are manufactured to a chosen color by altering the mixture of phosphors inside the tube. Warm-white fluorescents have a color spectrum of 3000 K and are famous for residential lighting. Neutral-white fluorescents have a color spectrum of 3700 K. Cool-white fluorescents have a color spectrum of 4200 K and are renowned for office lighting. Daylight fluorescents have a color spectrum of 5000 K to 6500 K, bluish-white.

Note that on the Nikon D5, you also have a preset for those awful Mercury-vapor lights or the Sodium-vapor on the other end of the spectrum. Sometimes, I have found that I prefer one of the fluorescent settings under some of the newer mercury-vapor lights when using this system instead of the custom white balance.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, ISO 64000, ƒ/2.8, 1/2500

These barrel racers come out of the gate at full speed and take their horse through a clover-leaf pattern around preset barrels in the fastest time. Keeping up with these animals was challenging.

I would shoot when I could see the rider’s face. Due to where you are standing with the camera, the horse and rider are facing away from you more than half of the time. Picking your moments was tough. If I were to do this again, I might even use remote cameras to give me more viewpoints.

The cowgirls are just as good with roping a calf. Breakaway roping is a variation of calf roping where a calf is roped but not thrown and tied. There is a split second where you can capture the moment where the calf is roped.

A little side note here. The cowgirls outperformed the cowboys when it came to roping at this rodeo. The cowboys missed more than the cowgirls, which lets me know women are showing more and more today their athleticism in our culture.

Team roping, known as heading and heeling, is a rodeo event that features a steer (typically a Corriente) and two mounted cowboy riders. The time of this event is just seconds. Times on the roping events are in the seconds. For the cowgirl breakaway, roping, the winner was 2.7 seconds.

Bull Riding is the wildest and most dangerous event in rodeo. In the American tradition, the rider must stay atop the bucking bull for eight seconds to count as a qualified ride. The rider tightly fastens one hand to the bull with a long braided rope. It is a risky sport and has been called “the most dangerous eight seconds in sports.”

The bulls are rated and even more famous in many ways than the cowboys who ride them. This bull here had 27 consecutive buck-offs; now that is 28. A cowboy must stay on the bull 8 seconds for the ride to count. Then they get a score that considers the bull they are riding.

When a bull is determined unrideable every once in a while, the Professional Bull Riders Association has a million-dollar ride. At $125,000 per second, this bonus ride offers one of the largest payouts any athlete has ever received for the time they are required to compete. In comparison, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo received roughly 12 million dollars to play in 15 NFL games in 2013.  At 54,000 seconds per season, it took Romo 4,500 seconds to make $1 million.

Take Aways

As you can see, 2.5 sec is a short time to get your photo in the breakaway roping. You don’t have time to wait to frame your shot. You don’t have time to check your focus. You must have the gear that will allow you to focus on the event.

The combination of my Nikon D5 and the Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S was perfect for this event. The composition changes so quickly with these events that a fixed lens would have been too tight or too loose. The ability to zoom soon and get the essential parts of the event in the photo was possible because the 120-300mm range worked perfectly for the rodeo.

Nikon D5, Sigma TC-2001 2x, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, ISO 1800, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000

Youth football is a dream come true for most sports photographers. The games are played mainly during the sunlight, and the access to the action is the best you can get compared to shooting high school varsity football which is usually played on a Friday night under poor lighting conditions and limited access.

You do not have to own the most expensive lenses to get great photos. You can get a great telephoto lens for anywhere from $500 to $2,000 to cover your kid’s games.

Sigma makes a 150-600mm lens for about $989. I shoot with the Sigma 120-300mm with a 2x teleconverter most of the time for football.

During the daytime, there is enough light to shoot at most shutter speeds and apertures of your choosing. On a Friday Night football game, you are shooting 1/500 and wide open aperture under those lights to get an image.

Here are my tips for those wanting to start shooting your kid’s youth sports activities.

• Use a lens of at least 300mm – For the money, I recommend a zoom like the Sigma 150-600mm
• Use Auto ISO
  • Set the lowest ISO to 100
  • Set the highest ISO to the one recommended by the camera manufacturer as top of the normal range
  • Set the Shutter Speed to 1/4000 
• Shoot in Aperture mode since the Auto ISO is taking care of the shutter speed
• Custom White Balance
• Use a monopod
• Shoot close to wide open as possible. If shooting with a ƒ/1.4 lens, this may be too shallow of depth-of-field. ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/5.6 is an excellent range to make the background go blurry
• Position yourself so that the action is coming towards you and that you are where you can see the athlete’s faces
• Shoot RAW 
• Use Adobe Lightroom to process your images

Parents are in love with the “environmental portrait.” They love a good photo of their kid in uniform on the playing field. I think of these like the trading card photos you see of your favorite pro players. By the way, today, it is easy to make trading cards of your kid and maybe their team. Here is a link to doing it. 

I was in the end-zone in all these photos of the youth football game. Because I am using the 240-600mm lens [because of the 2x converter], I can get some pretty good action shots without running up and down the field. I am just waiting for them to come to me.

I shot these for my friend to use as a gift to him. Maybe you know someone with kids who play ball and could use some photos of their kids. 

Why is youth football so great to photograph? As compared to Pro Football, here are some things that are different.

• You don’t need a press pass
• You can get closer to the action
• You can get by with less expensive gear since you are shooting in daylight
• Parking is an ease
• No one is expecting your images right away [if you had access to pro sports, you are shooting for someone who has an absolute deadline]

These are the settings that I use on my Nikon D5 for shooting almost all sports action. Nikon has made it pleasant to allow photographers to save these settings, so they do not have to remember every little setting they like to use for a shooting style.

If you go to the menu under the camera, the icon picks the first item, “Shooting menu bank.” I have chosen B, which is my sports menu.

If you toggle into the “Shooting menu bank,” you can rename those settings. Once you choose one of these settings, everything you do to change the menu will be saved in that menu bank. I recommend trying all my settings and then tweaking them to your preferences.

When shooting sports, it is prevalent for the lighting conditions to change instantly. For example, while the football player runs toward you, they may go from shade into direct sunlight. For this reason, I let the camera do some of my thinking.

Go to the camera icon and look for “ISO sensitivity settings.” Select this, and you will then see this menu:

I turn on the “Auto ISO sensitivity control.” Then I set the minimum shutter speed to 1/4000. Of course, you could pick something else. I used to shoot at 1/2000. The ISO setting is what you see in the smaller window below the menu. I set this to ISO 100 and the “Maximum sensitivity” to ISO 102400.

While I am in Aperture Mode shooting, the camera will always pick 1/4000 shutter speed. So if in sunlight I am at ƒ/4, the shutter speed may go as high as 1/8000 at ISO 100, but as the scene changes and the athlete is now in the shade, the camera will automatically drop to 1/4000 @ ƒ/4, and then change also the ISO up until I can still shoot at 1/4000.

The shutter speed will only dip below 1/4000 if the ISO peaks at 102400. If my aperture is wide open, the camera is doing everything I would have done manually but faster than I could ever adjust the camera. That is how you get more shots than the guy next to you.

Next, select the Pencil on the menu and go into the Custom settings bank.

Again just like the Photo Shooting Menu, create a Sports Menu as I have done here.

Next, choose Autofocus in the menu.

Then choose the Focus tracking with lock-on.

I change the “Focus tracking with lock-on” from Normal to 4. What happens when I do this is the delay for the lens to refocus if something occurs between the camera and the subject (like a referee). For example, while following someone, the camera will not refocus immediately. Again, you need to try and pick what you like. For example, you may want the lens to be more responsive and therefore go to set one, letting the lens refocus instantly.

Focus Settings

Note the lenses you choose affect the availability of focus points.

You want to pick Autofocus Continuous mode for sports.

In the menu Pencil selections, pick AF Activation under the Autofocus settings.

Then choose the AF-ON only. This means when you push the shutter release, it will not focus but fire the shutter to take a photo.

By changing these settings, you will notice the camera will stay in focus and shoot a faster frame rate. Great for following a baseball player sliding into a plate and another player trying to tag them, or maybe a football player is running toward you to score. You will find more photos tack sharp in a series.

I generally put my focus point dead center and lock it, so I don’t bump it. However, I am trying to get photos of moving subjects, and the off-center is too tricky. I may crop later for a better composition, but I want the subject to focus first.

This gets complicated, so pay attention to the highlighted text above.

• Moving Predictable – 25-point dynamic-area AF
• Moving Unpredictable – 72-point dynamic-area AF
• Moving Erratically side to side – 3D-tracking in AF-C

Here are the selections again with more explanation

The only other setting is on the lens that I turn on VR.