Samsung Sports Photography: Settings and Common Fixes

Focus, motion blur, mistimed shots and banding (particularly noticeable when shooting indoors under artificial lighting) are the most common problems people have when taking pictures of fast-moving subjects at a distance, like, say, people playing sports, with their phone.

Fortunately, most of these issues have pretty straightforward solutions that can be implemented before you even set foot on the field/court/rink/track/etc. Here’s how to get the best possible pictures of your kid’s/teammate’s/significant other’s next big game with your Galaxy phone.

Sports settings by situation

According to SamMobile, Samsung’s Camera Assistant on One UI 8.5 and later adds a new minimum shutter speed option to Photo mode. Users can pick from 1/1000, 1/500, 1/120 and 1/30 of a second.

According to Samsung’s Pro mode guide, manually selecting a shutter speed in Pro mode disables the Auto option for ISO sensitivity. In Photo mode, you can still use automatic exposure and burst shooting with Camera Assistant’s minimum shutter speed options, which is handy for shooting sports.

Blurred players

Motion blur against a sharp background is due to subject movement and a too-slow shutter speed. When the available light decreases (cloudy day, sports hall, evening) the camera will automatically select progressively slower shutter speeds in Photo mode. Legs and feet in particular blur unless you’re shooting at around 1/1000s (1/500s is the practical minimum indoors).

Noise from a raised ISO can be reduced in post, but a blurred player can’t be sharpened back to clarity, so favour a faster shutter speed and accept the noise. Other kinds of movement have initial speeds listed in our shutter speed guide. The Camera Assistant guide indicates where the minimum shutter speed setting is.

Shots taken a moment too late

Chances are, by the time you spot that moment and click away, it’ll be over. The best thing you can do is shoot in bursts throughout the entire action and prefocus on the anticipated action spot.

1. 1

   Set up the burst swipe

   Swipe down on the shutter button until you reach the bottom of the screen and hold your finger there to take burst shots. On a Galaxy S25 Ultra, make sure Take burst shot is enabled in Camera Assistant if you're using One UI 9. Pressing and holding the shutter button will start a video recording.

2. 2

   Start before the peak

   Start your burst when the cross comes in or the runner leans towards the finish line, and continue bursting until the play is completed. Our burst mode guide covers picking the best frame.

3. 3

   Pre-focus on the hotspot

   Focus on a specific area (the finish line or goalmouth, for example) and wait for your subject to enter the in-focus area. To focus there, touch and hold that spot on the screen until the AE/AF lock appears. The AE/AF lock guide explains the lock.

4. 4

   Stop between phases

   Release the shutter when play moves away. Half time is a good time to delete any obvious misses so you don’t run out of space.

Focus on the net, not the player

Unfortunately, on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Tracking auto focus is not available in Photo mode (at least as of November 2026 on One UI 9; your mileage may vary), which makes pre-focusing even more useful.

Even where it is available (see Tracking auto focus under Camera settings, General on the S25 and S26), Samsung’s S26 user guide lists certain conditions under which it won’t work or may lose focus, several of which can occur when photographing sports. For example, it can fail if the player you tapped on is too far away (and therefore appears too small in the frame), running very fast (too much movement), or you change the optical zoom factor while the action is on (the focus point can be lost if you change the optical zoom factor while using Tracking auto focus). Make sure you’ve got the zoom level you want before tapping on your subject, and don’t forget to tap again if you want to focus-track a different player.

Get as close to a gap in the fence or net as you can so it’s out of focus, or look for a gap and walk to one side for a clear view of the action.

Stripes under floodlights and sports-hall lights

Samsung attributes the striping to pulsing in lights, faster than the human eye can pick up on.

Samsung suggests this is normal behaviour and advises a Pro mode shutter speed of 1/120s or slower if you’re getting banded images. Try a couple of shots at 1/500s and 1/1000s, as some lights don’t suffer from banding. If you do see banding, drop down to 1/120s and try to capture images at the apex of a jump or when a player has slowed down to receive the ball.

1/120s is unlikely to be quick enough to freeze sprinting athletes, so it’s a question of what’s important to you.

Players too small in the frame

Positioning counts because so much amateur action unfolds beyond the reach of most phone lenses. Standing near the corner flag or at either end of the pitch frames the action better, and after that it’s about which lens your phone has.

• Telephoto zoom shots on the S21-S23 Ultra are from the 10x periscope telephoto camera (these phones also have a 3x telephoto). Shots taken from the far side of a football pitch, for example, will often make good use of the 10x camera.
• Telephoto zoom shots on the S24-S26 Ultra are from the 5x telephoto camera (10x is a crop of the 5x camera that can look pretty good in daylight).
• Telephoto zoom shots on the Galaxy S FE phones, Galaxy S (base model), Galaxy S Plus, and the Z Fold7 are from the 3x telephoto camera. Youth football and basketball can make good use of the 3x camera.
• The Galaxy Z Flip phones, Galaxy S25 Edge, and Galaxy A phones don’t have a telephoto camera. Get closer to your subject and crop in post from a photo taken with the 1x camera.

With Space Zoom’s processing past 10x, details get added that weren’t there before. Faces and jersey numbers start to take on a painterly effect. Our telephoto lens guide compares the lenses in more detail.

Video, slow motion and youth sport

Shooting in Video mode? Use Super steady to help minimise camera shake if you’re tracking play while shooting handheld. Want to shoot Slow Motion? You’ll find it if you tap More to see all shooting modes. Already have a clip you shot at regular speed? According to Samsung’s S26 user guide, open the video in Gallery, then touch and hold the screen during playback to play that part in slow motion. Our slow motion guide lists the slow-motion frame rates on each Galaxy and explains why those clips flicker under sports-hall lights.

At children’s events, always check the club’s photography policy and get permission from other parents before posting pictures online that include their children. Many clubs have specific guidelines around images being shared online, and something that might be suitable to share with family and friends may not be suitable to post on social media.

Editing action shots

Crop, using the pencil icon in Samsung’s Gallery editor, making sure to leave the player room to move into and not crop the ball out of the picture.

If necessary, use Object eraser in Gallery to remove objects that you don’t want in the picture (a stray cone, advertising board, etc).

Use Snapseed’s free Selective tool to increase brightness in specific areas (e.g. a player’s face in shadow under cap/brim).

Use the adjustment tool (sun icon) in Gallery to adjust brightness/contrast/saturation. Images taken indoors will often have been taken at a high ISO setting, meaning that they will contain ‘noise’. Rather than sharpen these images (which will only serve to emphasise the noise and make it look coarser/grittier), increase the contrast slightly.

If lighting in the sports hall is particularly poor/mixed, consider converting the image to black and white.