More night lax...in the rain

BlueHoseJacket

My daughter's HS team opened their season tonight...in the rain. With poor lighting an steady rain ...my good shots were hard to find. Unfortunately Iam shooting with a Canon XT and ISO tops out at 1600. These were shot with a 70-200 2.8.

The team started out very slow and trailed at halftime 8-1....in the second half came out strong...scoring six in a row to make it 8-7. They were unable to close out with a win..falling 11-9.









I need to teach my daughter to catch the yellow ball (in the net behind the goalie) not the red ball.


The opposing coach is getting married this coming weekend...her players made her a veil for the game.

David Evertsen

Wow love the rain coming down, great shots considering the conditions. What did you use to protect the camera from the elements??

BlueHoseJacket

Thanks David. I was not thrilled with any of the shots, but they were a huge improvement from the shots I took at the first game last year. Back then all I had to shoot with was a 70-200 f4...it was not able to handle the low light at all.

I am still not sure why I never seem to get the crispness that I see so often in so many other posts on here. Is it the Canon XT?...is it lack of IS...are my camera settings all wrong...a combination of all of these or is it just operator error.

During the rain I kept a plastic bag around the camera, I would hide the camera under my jacket and finally I just went to the bench where the school had covered benches and hid out for a while.

Thanks for looking and commenting

David Evertsen

BlueHoseJacket wrote:

I am still not sure why I never seem to get the crispness that I see so often in so many other posts on here. Is it the Canon XT?...is it lack of IS...are my camera settings all wrong...a combination of all of these or is it just operator error.

What settings are you using?? Are you shooting manual? Post those and we can see what you are doing, I suppose on some of them if you are below 400 on shutters speed you will see that blurring/not crisp. The XT is a great camera but is extremely limiting on night sports/low light action, it was very rare I could get faster than 1/250 on shutter speed with my XT at ISO1600 using my 70-200 2.8. I am shooting with a 50D now at ISO3200 most of the time.

SoonerShawn

Man your colors are really good, I'm gonna guess, without having seen your settings, that is probably the ISO and low light that is keeping you from being able to get the shutter speed you need to really make these shots pop like you are talking about. Nice captures though.

BlueHoseJacket

I went back and looked at the information on these shots...it becomes very apparent that I did not have a fast enough shutter speed.

All of the pictures above were shot at an ISO of 1600 and at f/2.8 and the first three shoots had a shutter speed of 1/200, the 4th was at 1/250 and the 5th was at 1/125.

I guess I need to learn to shoot in manual:bash

As far as the color goes...I am thinking I over did the post processing???

Thanks for the comments

KED

BlueHoseJacket wrote:

I went back and looked at the information on these shots...it becomes very apparent that I did not have a fast enough shutter speed.

All of the pictures above were shot at an ISO of 1600 and at f/2.8 and the first three shoots had a shutter speed of 1/200, the 4th was at 1/250 and the 5th was at 1/125.

I guess I need to learn to shoot in manual:bash

As far as the color goes...I am thinking I over did the post processing???

Thanks for the comments

I think you did great under very difficult conditions, and I don't think your colors are over-saturated at all. All of the shots you posted seem sharp on a player -- hopefully the player you intended!

I have been taught (and I follow this pretty rigorously) that sports shooting at night really requires manual exposure. FWIW, these are my "go to" settings for night sports: (1) RAW (I always shoot RAW); (2) 400 shutter speed (or if super fast athletes are involved, 500); (3) aperture 3.2 or 3.5 on an f/2.8 lens because I want more DOF than 2.8 affords, even at the cost of some exposure; and (4) max available ISO on my camera.

Even with those settings, I am usually under-exposed, but RAW lets me deal with that in post. And I rely heavily on Noiseware, because no matter how good the camera's high-ISO performance is reputed to be, there is noticeable noise.

Good luck -- you're doing great!

Firemann

I primarily shoot lax and use to use a Rebel XT before upgrading to a 40D. The 1600 ISO is your limiting factor in getting the faster shutter speeds you need to get the crisp pics you're looking for. One shooting technique that may help you is to try to concentrate on taking pictures of action coming more toward the camera than action traveling perpendicular to the camera where there is maximum motion. I know that's easier said than done in lacrosse, but it those type pics will be crisper at a slightly slower shutter speed. If you can shoot lacrosse, you can shoot anything!:D

BlueHoseJacket

Thanks for the comments everyone. I will get three chances this week to work on my shots..my daughter has games Tues, Thurs & Sat. with two of the games at night. Fortunately, Daylight Savings Time starts this coming weekend , which should be a huge help with the 6:00 games and as the season progresses help with the 7:00 starts.

I am going to try to shoot some of the shot in RAW this week, but I am not very proficient in Photoshop..this has me worried.

One more question...what metering mode should I be using to shoot lax for the best results?

tjk60

I think you should not worry about metering modes, but shoot manual. ISO to max, aperture to max and get the shutter to 1/400 at a minimum. I have shot night games with flash, but many areas don't allow it. (Football is different),

If you shoot raw, photoshop will open with Adobe Camera Raw, and this will let you push the exposure to get what you need. If you have to push it a lot, you will introduce noise that can be handled somewhat with Noise Ninja or Noiseware or many other noise programs.

Not many expect crystal clear, noise free images from nighttime sports outdoors, nail the focus, nail the WB and you are 2 steps closer to great pictures!

slipkid

The horizon is a bit slanted on the first two, easy to correct. They look good even in those bad conditions.
Lets see some more.

wmstumme

Good work under lights. I'm terrible in low light conditions, so the fact you got anything is impressive to me. I like the composition/framing of #2 the best.

BlueHoseJacket wrote:

I will get three chances this week to work on my shots..my daughter has games Tues, Thurs & Sat. with two of the games at night. Fortunately, Daylight Savings Time starts this coming weekend , which should be a huge help with the 6:00 games and as the season progresses help with the 7:00 starts.

If you start shooting manual, you'll have to check your settings pretty frequently to compensate for the setting sun.