What kind of digital camera do I need for shooting sports?
That's one of my favorite things to photograph, so you're asking the right guy. Sports pictures, you really need a SLR-type camera - not a bottom of the line SLR, but mid level/above – so you need to spend about fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars on the body and a pretty good high quality lens to get the sports pictures you want. The secret to sports photography is tracking auto-focus. The tracking auto-focus allows me to lock the focus dot on my subject, and the camera will follow them wherever they go in the picture. The other thing that tracking auto-focus does - is remember that we talked about shutter delay, earlier? – all cameras have a shutter delay. I press the button now, and at some later date, or later time a fraction of a second later, the camera takes the picture. When I'm shooting moving subjects, that also means that the subject has moved during that time. So with your compact cameras – even the ones with the big zoom – I focus on the main subject, I press the button, a fraction of a second later the camera takes the picture. The subject has moved some amount of distance in that time, and therefore they're that much out of focus in every picture. With my SLR-type camera with tracking auto-focus – once again at the mid-level and above cameras – I can put the focusing dot on you, hit the shutter. Every picture or virtually every picture will be in focus, even in the motor driver action mode where it goes clickety-clickety-clickety-click – it keeps every one in focus. That's why for sports photography you need to spend a little bit more money to get great pictures. If good pictures are good enough, maybe one of the compact cameras with the big zoom is ok. But for great pictures, you've got to spend the money, unfortunately.
