i took nearly 1400 pictures during the Singapore Open this year. it was nice to be able to take pictures right next to the court. i want to share the few things that i have learned from the experience. hopefully they will help ppl who are interested in getting into taking photos for badminton. just a warning though, i am only an amateur, professional probably will laugh at me for giving out these tips...
clothing - you will be sitting on the floor and knees and crouching all the time, make sure you wear something comfortable especially comfortable flexy shoes.
camera - badminton is too fast. way way too fast. a regular P&S and prosumer camera may give you one or two good shots. for real action ones, you need a SLR camera with good shutter response. a digital one is almost a must nowadays as you can take as many pictures as you like and delete away the bad ones as you go (80% of them). i used a D70 which was nice. but the professionals next to me are using the even more expensive models with burst rate that i can only envy. 5fps will increase the chance of catching the right moment much better than 3fps.
lens - most pros use a 80-200/2.8 most of the time. unfortunately, that lens is way more than what i can afford. in fact, i mostly used a 70-210/3.5-4.5 and a 50/1.8. the 50 is sharp, but the 70-210 isn't very good at all but i had to deal with what i have.
lighting/shutter - badminton is fast action. there is a action mode in most camera but i want more control than that. i use the shutter priority mode all the time and set the shuttler to 1/250 or 1/200. that's good enough for most shots. i think it is possible to freeze action with 1/500sec and a 50/1.4 lens, but the lens will cost US$200-300..
ISO - not much need to be said here, use the highest ISO setting your camera give you. i used ISO1600 most of the time. the lighting in the stadium was very very good but for fast action photos, we will still have to deal with some grains and noise. being digital, we can do a post processing step and if you are planning to put the picture up on the internet, the scaling down is more than enough to take out most of the noise.
manual focus - for action shot, i use manual focus all the time. it take ages for the camera to autofocus and then take a shot. by that time, the player already moved away. pre-focus to a certain spot and then wait for the player to move there. it is also important to hold the camera correctly, as you need two eyes, one for the viewfinder, the other one to watch the action.
having said that, i find myself constant changing between M/AF. AF is very very nice outside the rally to capture player's emotion. set the autofocus to the middle and just let the camera focus on their faces and body. the key is to remember to not watch the game and then put down the camera when the rally is over. keep on taking pictures even after the rally is done. i have captured a few nice shots that way.
burst - it is very hard to catch the right moment of the action. pros with lots of experience can probably do it better than me, but for me, much of it is some good guess in the timing and then the rest is luck. to increase the luck, i use continuous shooting mode. my D70 can do up to 9 shots in full res at around 3fps. so i watch the action, time it and then start right before the action and then stop afterwards. usually that's 2-3 shots. if i get lucky, some of them will come out interesting. most of the time, they are only so so.. this goes back to the discussion of the body, the faster the burst rate, the more you can take in and higher chance of a better shot.
storage - i only have one 1G flash card, that hold 277 pictures. with digital photos however, i am able to take lots and lots without any cost. i used up the whole card just shooting the MS final alone. and unfortunately, i don't have a CF reader and downloading via USB takes ages. i wish i had one or two more to spare so i can just swap it out.
positioning - with a media pass, i was able to shoot from right next to the court side. it was nice. the best positions are right behind the umpire, hiding behind/under the umpire chair, or at the four corners. the umpire chair position i used the 50/1.8 for all actions around the court, the corners i use both 70-210 for the other end of the court or the 50/1.8 for close-by rear court action.
hopefully these tips will help the future badminton photographers out there. the rest is just left to your own preference of shots and imagination.
enjoy!
It's a performance issue - not so much a skills issue.
