REALLY BAD Flashless Night Football

MDalby

I was going to thread jack the "REALLY GOOD Flashless Night Football" thread but I thought I would try to get you experts suggestions. I do pretty good work in daylight but I am really struggling with night shots.

I am having a HORRIBLE time with night football. I don't know if I have inadequate gear or inadequate skills or a lot of both. :scratch

Any thoughts on settings is appreciated. Do I need faster glass? Am I just not going to get good night shots with a D300?

Thanks in advance!

MD

nipprdog

MDalby wrote: »

I am having a HORRIBLE time with night football.

Everyone struggles with it.

You shouldn't expect to shoot at 1/1250 at night. In most cases, 1/250- 1/400 is the best you can get.

mercphoto

Can I ask what it is in particular you do not like about the shots? I mean, you're pretty vague, and the shots don't look horrible to me. As far as faster glass goes you'd be hard pressed to get faster than your f/2.8 in any reasonable focal length. And the 1/1,250 shutter speed is more than fast enough, you could easily dial that down some in order to drop the ISO some.

cletus

MDalby wrote: »

I was going to thread jack the "REALLY GOOD Flashless Night Football" thread but I thought I would try to get you experts suggestions. I do pretty good work in daylight but I am really struggling with night shots.

I am having a HORRIBLE time with night football. I don't know if I have inadequate gear or inadequate skills or a lot of both.

Any thoughts on settings is appreciated. Do I need faster glass? Am I just not going to get good night shots with a D300?

Thanks in advance!

MD

The noise in those pics isn't great but I wouldn't call it horrible.

From your image data it looks like you're shooting with a 70-200 f/2.8 or similar. You shouldn't need faster glass than that for football. Also the D300 is known as a pretty good low light camera. In Nikon land you're not going to see an improvement in noise until you move up to the D700 - around $1k more and it's full frame meaning any DX lenses you have will not work with it.

As Jim said, try a slower shutter speed. Football players will still be sharp at 1/250th provided you make at least some attempt to pan with the action. Dropping you shutter speed down will let you bring the ISO down a couple clicks and get rid of some of that noise.

Good luck and be sure to let us know how things go!

donek

Wow Mark. The Bennett Field here meters at 1/60, f4, ISO 3200. I have no choice but to use a flash. I think you must have some awesome lighting there. Just dial down that shutter speed and ISO 1 to 1 1/2 stops and you'll be golden.

MDalby

Thank you all for the advice. I will dial down the shutter speed and see if I get blurred images but I think I really don't have a choice.

I will post some new shots with this weekends game.

MD

Zerodog

What metering did you use? Matrix? If so, try spot metering.

Jacobovs

Ditto on dropping the shutter speed. I rarely shoot below 500 though. What also makes it tough is the dark spots on the field where the lighting is poorer than some of the other areas. It's usually not consistent. What I have found though is that if you stick to the center of the field ie.. 20yard line to 20 yard line the lighting is usually better. I have stopped shooting endzone action in most night time HS fields. I try to shoot from the 20 to 20. BtW I get great results with my 200 f2 but its a bit pricey and heavy.

xchangx

It looks like the subject is slightly in front of the focus plane. Happens to me a lot. I would try to fine tune the lens to front focus a little bit. At least with # 2 it looks that way, little bit with #1.

Daddy0

I have been shooting my high schools games both at home and away. I have a D90 with a Sigma 70-200 f2.8. I set my ISO around 2000 and shoot at approx. 1/1250th, all with no flash. I have gotten some good results. My high school is a small school, so we go to fields that don't have much in the way of lighting. I won't be able to download tonights game pics until I get back to work on Monday, but I will post some from the last 2 or 3 games.

stone cold

I agree that you need to drop your ISO. But, you will need a minimum of 1/500 to stop most of the action I do 1/640 and get about 90% stopped. If you try at 1/250 you are going to be dissapointed cause they will be blurry.

jhefti

Ha! Where I sometimes shoot high school events I am at ISO 6400 and 1/640 (on f/2.8 lenses). There was even a professional soccer game I covered there where I had my ISO at 12,800! No sympathies here!

...but I agree with others that you can drop your shutter speed a bit and bring your ISO down accordingly. The shot doesn't look all that bad. If you're bothered by the noise in the dark background, just do a local adjust and push the denoising a lot. It should look fine.

johng

so - here's my take. The biggest issue with the posted shot is: it's under exposed. You cannot see his face at all. That's the most important part. So yes, you can lower the shutter speed - but get faces exposed properly before you worry about reducing ISO. 1/400, F2.8 and ISO 3200-6400 is pretty normal for football under the lights. I have no idea how some of you are shooting small schools at ISO 2000 and managing to get faces exposed properly.

Scott293

johng wrote: »

so - here's my take. The biggest issue with the posted shot is: it's under exposed. You cannot see his face at all. That's the most important part. So yes, you can lower the shutter speed - but get faces exposed properly before you worry about reducing ISO. 1/400, F2.8 and ISO 3200-6400 is pretty normal for football under the lights. I have no idea how some of you are shooting small schools at ISO 2000 and managing to get faces exposed properly.

Couldn't have sad it better myself!!...Dead on the difference between a parent shooting and thinking they are a sports photographer and a sports phtographer is getting faces and there eye's. Just look at a few post from a few people on this site to see the difference. It dosent matter if it's Pee Wee or pro you have to get the faces. Example this shot is at 300mm 2.8 1/800 6400 ISO

jonh68

It's underexposed. Even at ISO 200 underexposed will have noise. I would start at 1/500 and go back and forth from there.

Dreadnote

For what it's worth, Kelby training has a video on shooting high school football. Long story short, they were shooting a 400mm f/2.8 1/1000-1/1250s at iso 5000 on a d3s and a d4. The shots looked great, but you have to ask yourself if its worth $12-15k to get the job done.

photodad1

The lighting at high school football games is a challenge to say the least. I recommend shooting at F2.8 at a shutter speed of 1/400, ISO 2500-3200. Also, try photographing from the visitor side of the field as sometimes the lights are closer to the field. Be careful when photographing from the back of the end zone as the lighting really drops off.

EphTwoEight

I'm loving the low mounted flash, upside-down, at 1/4 power. ISO never needs to be above 1600, shutter at 250. No red eye, faces lit perfectly, action frozen.