Night footy match

[kelliekann]

Am attending a night local footy match tomorrow night and was wondering if anyone could give me some tips on the best camera settings to use. Thanks :)

[kiwi]

Based on the average llighting for a suburban footy game I will shoot 1/500s, iso10600, F/2.8

Based on the average camera and lens it's simply a waste of time unless you shoot purely stationery objects.

Not easy.

[CapnBloodbeard]

Night sport is tough - you'll soon find out just how little light there is!
You'll need to use a fairly high ISO - quite possibly, 1600 or 3200. You'll also want a reasonably fast shutter speed to catch the action - just to counter your own camera shake, you want the shutter speed to equal the effective focal length of the lens (got a 200mm lens? you'll want 1/320 or faster) - probably 1/500 or faster to really capture the action.

This will probably mean you'll need to shoot wide open. Unfortunately this won't be the sharpest aperture to shoot at, but between a soft shot and no shot at all...well, not hard to figure out which is the lesser evil. The wide aperture can help to isolate the subject, but it also depends on your lens as to how effective that is (the more zoom, the closer the subject, the further away everything else is = the more the background will be blurred).

Use your high speed shooting mode. Shooting in JPEG may even help more as this may allow you to shoot slightly faster, and can also help clear the buffer of images faster so you can keep shooting more (I still prefer to shoot in RAW though).

As it's night shooting, the exposure should remain constant. When the players are warming up take a few shots of them to measure exposure against your histogram, then use manual mode and lock in those settings.

Feel free to experiment with a slightly slower shutter speed - just don't forget to stop down the aperture to match.

As for the actual shooting - the more isolated your subject is, the better. Try to get the ball and the face in the frame as much as possible. You want to get tight (sure, you can crop in afterwards but this loses quality). Keep an eye on play, and if you can pre-empt where play is going this will help. If you know a certain player is about to receive the ball, focus on him and wait for the ball to come. This can allow you to get a better timed shot.

Dont' forget that there's a delay in shooting. What happens is that you see something interesting happen (say, a great tackle). The signal takes a few moments to travel to your brain. Your brain takes a few moments to say 'hey, that's a great shot - better press the shutter!'. The signal then takes a few moments to travel to your shutter finger, which then takes a couple of moments to travel the 1 or 2mm to press the shutter. Then there's a noticeable delay (shutter lag) in the camera before the shutter is released.

Long story short - if you react to what you see, you'll miss the shot. You'll need to sort of press the shutter as something is about to happen, to get it spot on. Review your images at halftime, have a think about your timing and go from there, figure out if you're shooting too early or late.

Look online at images for your sport and figure out why they're good. Look for the same sport on here and you'll find critiques - try to keep these in mind when shooting.

Sports shooting is fun, but it's a challenge and it can also be damn frustrating.

When it's done, post a few of your best on here and we'll offer you some constructive criticism.

Good luck and have fun!

[kelliekann]

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately the pics didnt work out at all. Will stick to trying to improve the daytime footy shots :)

[kiwi]

Don't feel too bad, I don't bother these days either at these ground

[phototyke]

also have a walk around the ground before the game and look for 'hotspots' where the floodlights are strongest....there is a huge difference between sports fields.........can be the difference between a good shot and failure!