Capturing Focus on Shoes, Athlete Photography

Shooting shoes and finding focus on them may be one of the most difficult things to do in photographing athletes.

You have an object that is constantly moving, shuffling back and forth and you have another subject that’s repeatedly crossing in front of it. It’s a consistent movement overall but outside the normal capacity of autofocus. It’s difficult for a camera to lock on focus and keep focus when you have a scene this erratic.

Also, as we’ve talked about in previous blog posts, when you’re at ground level, you are limited. You can’t go below unless you have the right elevation or location so you can either shoot from level or down on the shoe.

There are a few strategies I use to get a higher focus hit rate, and I’ll walk through just a few of them here.

Place Foot Here

I gave the model instruction to land her left foot on the spot just in front of the seams in the flooring. I hate landing on a crack...bothers me for some reason. 

A method I use frequently with models is to have them place their foot in a specific spot where I’ve pre-set the focus. We can use either manual focus or continuous autofocus on that spot, and usually, the camera will grab it once it comes into frame. I’ve had good success with autofocus in this situation. The camera is ready with the focus point on that spot, and as soon as the foot comes into frame, it grabs focus and keeps it. This is a way I’ve used for hero shots and close-up shots with shoes, and it offers a bit more flexibility around that focus point. After getting the main shot I will follow the runner through the frame as well.

Manual Focus

This shot was done in manual to make sure I got the shoes as the passed by. There is a little bit of wiggle room since I had the aperture at f3.5.

The tried and true method — so not even using the computer inside the camera. What I’ll do is have the subject stand where I’m expecting to get the shot (lifting foot if needed), set the focus, give myself a little bit of wiggle room, and then shoot the scene. In this case, you’re guaranteed to get something in focus, knowing that you are also not going to get as many options before and after the intended frame. I think that a lot of times, the really interesting shots can be the ones right before or right after your intended framing so this is obviously a downside to this method. You are potentially missing a lot of happenstance with manual focus, but you’re also committing to getting the shot you have in mind without error.

Helpful tip - I use peaking levels to show focus on manual setting. It helps me to not only see focus but also it will alert me if I accidentally flip to Manual from Auto (sometimes the way I hold the lens causes the switch) and I just want to see if as quickly as possible.

Same plane of focus

If you’re shooting with enough distance, the body and the shoes are going to be in focus together, so you can lock onto the body and keep the shoes in focus. Obviously the aperture matters, setting the depth of focus. I’ve talked about this in previous blog posts—when you bring the subject closer to the shoes, whether they’re sitting or kneeling, you can create that plane of focus where both the face and the shoes are in focus. Then you can focus on the face and not have to worry about focusing on the shoes.

A lot is in focus in this image so it's a little bit of a cheat but I definitely was not focusing on the shoes here even though they are the focal point. 

f3.5, 1/8000, 24mm

This shot we used continues autofocus to lock onto the runner and capture the shoes in the same plane. 

f1.4, 1/8000, 24mm

In this example I really wanted to blur the foreground so we were using the same plane to focus on the runner without worrying about the shoes, even though we were able to in fact get the shoes in focus too. 

f1.2, 50mm, 1/1600

Auto Focus Tracking, AEL

Something I don’t try very often, but it’s certainly possible, is using autofocus tracking. The AEL button on the camera (via Sony) is super helpful in sports photography for tracking a subject and staying locked on them. I use that quite a bit, and it’s really nice to have as an auxiliary button. You can use it for shooting footwear and tracking feet, but you have to play around with the focus sensitivity. What you need for footwear is a less sensitive focus, which would stay locked on your subject and not be distracted by something moving in front of that focus. Alternatively, Sony also recommends zone focus for unpredictable subjects which I would consider feet to be in this situation.

My camera manufacturer (Sony) has a focus settings guide that is super helpful for understanding the right settings for the situation here.

I used AEL on this shot. I had been shooting the full subject and wanted to get shots of the shoes closer up. I didn't take time to change settings because we were in serious heat and traffic was building up on the road. Despite keeping tracking sensitivity at 4/5, this shot came out great. 

f2, 50mm, 1/2500

Sony has some great guides available for pinning down the proper focus but shooting shoes is still just a unique need.