Hi Eddie,
Available light HS football is almost the most difficult HS sport to do. I think only night soccer is worse. If you or others are looking to get pictures like you see off the wires in your metro paper or in Sports Illustrated, forget it. You're not going to get them often, if ever. You will, however, sometimes get usable stuff and occasionally you'll surprise yourself. Like all sports photography when you shoot football there are certain things you do to increase the chances of getting good stuff. If you have experience you know them. If not, you have to watch, experiment, practice and learn like everyone else did. Like most of becoming a good photographer this kind of thing can't be taught, it can only be learned.
I haven't had a chance to do football with my E10 yet. Most of what follows is based on shooting HS football with film and a few minutes of shooting HS BB with my E10 last winter.
With that in mind: Some things to remember about night HS football:
The light on most fields nowadays seems to run about F2.5 @ 250th at 1600 ISO at most; less after you pass the last light pole towards the end zones. It's unfortunate but that's all the light there is. We all have to deal with it. If you can't shoot at that exposure level (and an E10 can't) you have two choices: Correctly expose at a slower shutter speed or underexpose and do extensive post processing on every picture. (I suppose you could try to shoot w/flash but that creates different problems to deal with; distance from the flash, exposure against a black sky, battery life and coaches and players who claim you're interfering with the game.)
F2.5 @ 250th at 1600 speed is about the same as F2.5 @ 60th @ 320. (2 stops more exposure). If you decide to shoot at that slower shutter speed you will have trouble holding the camera steady at a 60th and you will having trouble stopping action at a 60th. Most pictures will not be usable.
That leaves underexposure and post processing as the only real possibility for getting anything decent. Set your camera to ISO 320, Manual mode, F2.4 aperture and a 250th (or 200) shutter speed and go shoot.
Focus will be a problem. There will be much less depth of field shooting wide open and the E10's autofocus is not designed for this kind of shooting. Your best bet will be to try and shoot when the action is moving parallel to you. Press halfway to set the focus and shoot. Shooting someone running at you as fast as they will not work all that often. Sometimes runners slow down and you'll be able to lock focus then. You can try manual focus but it's been my experience that for a variety of design reasons it's really not that useful. Your experience (and that of others) may be different so by all means try it.
When you review your pictures they will look dark. Ignore it. At home download your pictures to your computer and use any image proccessing program's levels and white balance adjustment to get something usable. You'll be surprised how much detail is in the shadows just waiting to be brought out.
Yep, ISO 320 is noisy from an E10. Yep, it's too bad the E10 doesn't have 1600 ISO Yep, it would be nice to have a longer lens. Unfortunately, increased capabilities cost more. A lot more. A Nikon D1H costs $4400, a D1X costs $5400 and an F2.8 300MM Nikon AF lens costs $4,600. If you're shooting this kind of stuff you have to pay it or deal with a cheaper camera's limitations.
Hints on how to shoot football?
It's all a question of probabilities. It should be obvious you want to fill your frame with adequately exposed, sharp, interesting material. The longer lenses and higher frames per second rates that people who absolutely have to come back with a picture use are all designed to allow them to get more pictures with a larger subject so they have more shots to choose from. With the E10's limitations you won't get as many keepers as they do but you should get some.
You don't have a long lens so you'll have to wait for the action to come to you. The shorter the lens you use the fewer chances you'll get, so be ready. Unfortunately what this means in actual practice out there on Friday nights is that you need sideline access. If you're shooting from the stands or even from the far side of a track you have far fewer chances to shoot, your subjects will be much further away and your pictures will show it.
You'll need to shoot differently than the uptown guys (or girls) from the metro papers you'll sometimes share sidelines with. They have longer lenses than you do so they can set up on the 20 yard line and shoot up the field. You can't, your lens isn't long enough. Instead, stand 7-10 yards in front of the line of scrimmage and shoot as the runner (hopefully) comes towards you or setup slightly behind the line of scrimmage and shoot into the backfield as the QB drops back to pass or the handoffs are done. And again, there will be just a few times when everything comes together, so be ready.
If you have really have no experience shooting football go get some. Go stand on some Saturday morning JV sidelines. The light is better, there's far less pressure and it's good practive for Varsity. Sometimes there is no substitute for experience. This is one of those times. . . .
Remember: sometimes a picture of the coach jumping in the air out of joy (or frustration), the cheerleaders tensely watching with a few seconds left in the game, or the fans yelling after a touchdown will be a far better picture than yet another mediocre field action shot.
And after reading all this, and other replies, remember: The only absolute rule is this: the big, round glass thing on the front goes towards the subject.
Hope this helps. . . .
Tom Woolf
