The Sports or Action settings of a digital camera are not the only things you can use or do to get great sporting photos.  Unlike other forms of photography, in the digital photography of sports the person using the camera has a large role to play the timing of the photos is crucial and there is only a split second to take it.

If you are taking photos of a game being played on a large field, you have two ways of going about it.  You can keep the camera to your eye and follow the action as it moves so that you are ready to press the shutter button in a split second – this is the best technique for games like hockey and footballs where the action happen anywhere on the field.  The second option best for sports like baseball and basketball is to keep the camera focused on where the action is likely to occur (the batter or the basket) and be ready press the button at the exact moment of the action.

No matter how fast your trigger finger is on the shutter button, there will always be a time lag between the button being pressed and the picture being taken as the camera will need to set itself to take the picture.  This time lag is usually in fractions of a second but in fast moving sports, the delay could cause you to miss the crucial play you want to capture.  The solution to this is the keep the shutter button half pressed this keeps the camera continually resetting itself and reduces even the split second time lag.  You can also use the Continuous mode on the camera so it will take a rapid burst of photos as long as the button is being pressed.  You will get a chain of pictures of the event and can then pick the best ones to keep.

Another cause of camera delays in the digital photography of sports is that until the previous photos has been written to the memory card, the next one cannot be taken a memory card with a slow write time will delay the taking of your next picture.  The faster the write speed of the memory card, the less will be the time before the next picture can be taken.