more college football

BlueHoseJacket

Here are a couple more shots from Thursday nights game between Georgia Tech and U. of Virginia. This was the ESPN Thursday night throwback game with Georgia Tech wearing uniforms and helmets from 1970. All of these shts were taken from the stands (3rd row) with Canon Rebel XT and a 300mm zoom lense. Not the equipment or location for great shots. Would appreciate ANY comments or advice on how I might improve shots from this location with the equipment I am using.

Aperture Priority 5.6, Shutter Speed 1/125, ISO 400, Focal Length 210mm


Aperture Priority 6.3, Shutter Speed 1/200, ISO 800, Focal Length 300.0mm

Aperture priority 6.3, Shutter Speed 1/320, ISO 800, Focal Length 300.0mm


Aperture Priority 6.3, Shutter Speed 1/200, ISO 800, Focal Length 300.0mm


Apeture Priority 5.6, Shutter Speed 1/200, ISO 800, Focal Length 300mm


Aperture Priority 5.6, Shutter Speed 1/200, ISO800, Focal Length 300.0mm



Aperture Priority 5.6, Shutter Speed 1/320, ISO 1600, Focal Length 300.0mm

chuckice

You might want to post the exif info for each shot...it'll help in evaluating what you can modify.

Cason

Did you have your on camera flash with some of these shots? The only reason I am asking this is because I see several shots with shutter speed set to 1\200. I don't think that would be fast enough.

Maybe increase the ISO to 1600 so you can increase the shutter speed. That would help in allowing you to stop those action shots with minimal movement blur.

tmlphoto

The last shot, f/5.6, 1/320, ISO 1600 , seems to be the sweet spot for that lighting. I would put it on manual and leave it at those settings.

luisferfranco

For football (and almost any other sport) you shouldn't use aperture priority, but speed (or time) priority (Tv I think in Canon), in your case you should go to ISO 1600 or even 3200 if your camera allows it and the noise is not an issue.

You should be shooting AT LEAST at 1/500... might cause some underexposure, but that's correctable sometimes in postprocessing.

Did you use flash? I think flash is worthless (unless VERY powerful, or action very close) from the position you were.

johng

tmlphoto wrote:

The last shot, f/5.6, 1/320, ISO 1600 , seems to be the sweet spot for that lighting. I would put it on manual and leave it at those settings.

Agree - the all the rest of the shots (except the helmets) have way too much motion blur.

On the cheerleader shot - you need to decide what you want from the photo - at the distance you were at, f5.6 is too wide an aperture to have both cheerleaders in focus. So, you either need to close down aperture (and accept slower shutter speeds which means you need to brace the camera better) or just select one cheerleader - the crop used has both cheerleaders as focal points but only the one in back is in focus.

cecilc

This is the answer ...

tmlphoto wrote:

The last shot, f/5.6, 1/320, ISO 1600 , seems to be the sweet spot for that lighting. I would put it on manual and leave it at those settings.

Yes, tmlphoto has it !

Under stadium lights (be it college, pro, or high school) you should be shooting in manual. If you're in AV mode your shutter speed will be all over the place depending on what color jersey you're focused on and metering off of ... if you're in TV mode your aperture will not be consistent, again depending on what color jersey you're focused on and metering off of. The lighting is consistent, and with non-changing lighting situations like that manual settings for exposure are the way to go ....

Your best settings seemed to be ISO 1600; f5.6; and 1/320 (and you're getting that because the lights at Bobby Dodd are so good!). You could probably even shoot at 1/400 and suffer that 1/3 stop underexposure and stop the action a little better ....

And motion blur is not always caused just by too slow a shutter speed .... look at your 2nd shot - 1/200 at 300mm ..... besides that shutter speed being waaaaaay too slow, camera movement on your part probably contributed to that blurry shot.