Take control : M for manual !

Whatever camera you have, to get the best shots in the rink you need to have a manual mode. Most cameras have Sports modes and while these may be good for outdoor activities, the conditions in the rink are challenging and for that we need to take manual control. This is usually identified by "M" on the camera and allows you to set the aperture and shutter speed directly. Let's look at what these key settings mean...and how to adjust them.

Let's start with Aperture first. This setting determines the amount of light coming through the lens to the sensor. For hockey photography this mostly means opening up the lens to let in the maximum amount of light - we'll talk another day about situations where you may want to deviate from this rule - which is achieved by setting to the smallest number your lens will allow. This will usually be something like f2.8 or f4. This makes for the brightest picture but means that the depth of focus is small so that the chance of missing focus on the shot is increased.

Now let's consider the shutter speed. The faster the shutter speed the more the action will be frozen, but there will be less time for the sensor to gather the light. This results in a darker picture. For Novice level hockey (ages 7-8) you can get good pictures with shutter speeds faster than 1/400 of a second. As the skating gets faster (the kids get older) then you probably want to aim for a faster shutter speed e.g. a minimum of 1/800 of a second.

Finally there is the ISO or sensitivity setting. This increases the sensitivity of the camera sensor by increasing the gain of the signal electronically. A low ISO has low gain and therefore low noise in the photo (this usually appears as "grain" in the picture) and a higher ISO has higher gain and so higher noise. Normally we want the noise as low as possible and this is usually achieved with ISO at 800 or less, although this is rarely a practical setting for most rinks.

The simple rink settings are...set the Aperture wide open (e.g. f2.8), set the Shutter Speed good enough to freeze the action (e.g. 1/800) and then set the ISO to get the exposure right. This will usually need about 1600 for a "bright" rink and 3200 or 6400 for darker ones. If your camera has an Auto ISO mode then this can often be the best setting as the camera will adjust this in real time to get the correct exposure with your preferred Aperture and Shutter settings. OK...camera basically set up...we'll talk about setting white balance next time and then taking some shots.