Let's talk about how to take great pictures at your kids' soccer games. That nice camera in your hands (or the one you really have your eye on!) is a fabulous tool, but you know you can create better photographs than the ones you've been getting recently. You're not giving up your day job to pursue a career as the next great photographer of Sports Illustrated or ESPN Magazine -- you just want to capture great shots of your kids and their teammates.

Your frustration is about to end, my friend! I've shot for ESPN, I make a living at professional photography and I'm here to help. Prepare yourself to be a hero to your fellow soccer moms and dads!

TIP #1: THE CAMERA

You need a digital "SLR" camera. A "point and shoot" camera will not get the job done.

SLR cameras, like the one on the left, do not have the infuriating shutter delay that comes with a "point and shoot" camera, plus the SLR optics and quality just can't be duplicated in a "point and shoot." The top SLR manufacturers are Canon, Nikon, and Sony (there are others, but those are the big three). You can't go wrong with any of them. Most professional sports photographers use Canon, and so do I, but you can get great images from a Nikon or a Sony as well. SEE MANY CHOICES HERE. You can spend as little as $500 or you can drop thousands of dollars. Spend as much as you can afford and still have money left over for TIP #2:

TIP #2: THE LENS

The lens is just as important as your camera! The little plastic "kit" lens that comes with a lot of cameras is NOT good enough. Let your kid practice juggling with it -- that's a much better use for that chunk of plastic.

In order to get decent shots of the action during a game, without stepping onto the field and shooting from the referee's vantage point (I don't think he'd like that anyway), you're going to need a zoom lens that goes up to 200mm AT LEAST! 300mm or more would be even better, if you really want to get up-close action shots across a soccer field. When you're buying a lens, you'll see a lot of numbers, like this: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM. That "70-200mm" is how far the lens can zoom. The higher the number, the more you can zoom in. That second number (f/2.8) is how wide the lens can open up to let light into the camera, and LOWER NUMBERS are better! The lower the number, the more light the lens can let in, and that's a very good thing.

You'll see some lenses that say stuff like this: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. 300mm -- cool! See that "f/4-5.6" number? That means the camera can use the lens's f/4 number when you're not zooming, but when you zoom all the way to 300mm, your lens will only be able to open up to f/5.6. That's still not bad, but it's a lot better to have a lens that just has ONE f/number. That's a sign of a high quality lens -- the kind you see on the sidelines in the hands of SI shooters. No worries: you can still get great pictures with a lens that says something like "f/4-5.6," and you'll still have money left for the next pair of cleats.

OK, You've got the gear. Now let's talk about taking the pictures on game day

TIP #3: READY, SET ... HOLD ON THERE, SPARKY! YOU NEED TO WARM UP, TOO!

Your kids warm up before every game to gets them loose. It gets them ready for the action. You need to warm up, too!

Part of warm-ups is getting your gear ready. First step: make sure you've got plenty of room on your memory card. I use a 8GB memory card for single games and a 16GB card for multi-game tournament days.  Format your card or make sure it's empty before you leave the house.

If you're one of those people that keeps years worth of photos on a single memory card without ever copying them to your computer, you need to stop that.  Stop it now.  Start every game with an empty memory card, copy them to your computer when you get home, make a backup (Carbonite is cool), then you'll be good to go for the next game.

Now that you've got your camera ready to go, you have to decide which settings to use. Your camera probably has a dial with a little running-man setting like this:

See picture to left!

In a pinch, you can use this setting.

Do you want to be more in charge of what your camera is doing? Get off that full-auto setting and use the SHUTTER SPEED setting. For Nikon and Sony, that means you set your camera to "S" (Shutter). On a Canon, you set it to "Tv" (Time Value).

You're going to want a shutter speed of at least 1/250 to get good action without a lot of motion blur. You may want to go up to 1/400 or 1/500 to really stop the action. The camera will choose an f/number for you based on the shutter setting you choose.

You're also going to need to set your ISO. Press the ISO button on your camera, and dial in 200. That's a good standard ISO setting for a daytime game (more on ISO later... I don't want to overwhelm you now).

OK, one last setting: The "Drive Mode" Do you want your picture to take one picture every time you press the shutter (one shot mode), or do you want it to keep taking pictures if you keep the shutter pressed down (continuous)? That's the "Drive Mode," and you want that "continuous" setting for sports!

Your camera may have a button that says "DRIVE" (like mine does), or it may have a button or a menu setting that has little stacked rectangles next to it like this:

Use that so that your camera is set to the stacked rectangles and not the single rectangle.

Some cameras have a "high" and "low" continuous setting. If you've got that option, use the HIGH setting.

All rightee! You're ready to take pictures now! 
This is when you really start to warm up, and that means you take pictures during warmups!

This serves two purposes: 1) You get in the groove of timing your shots and 2) You can get some great shots during warmups! Ask the coach if you can hop on the field during shooting warmups -- this is an AWESOME time to get great pictures, especially of goalies.


It's really hard to get great goalie pictures and up-close shooting pictures, but not during the shooting warmups before a game. Take advantage of that! Try to shoot from an angle where you can't see a lot of teammates standing around in the background, so it looks like a "real" action shot during a game, not a warmup.

Here's a shot I took during a warmup when I was on the field:

shutter setting: 1/250 -- see how his leg is blurry? If I had used 1/400 or 1/500, his leg wouldn't be blurry, but I kinda like it that way. Up to you!

Get shots during the team stretching, too, not just the action.

You can capture great moments of friendship and camaraderie.

Here are two boys stretching, playing a little air guitar:



And the pre-game huddle on the field:



Now it's GAME TIME! The first whistle blows...