night shooting problems.

Ok guys. You have helped me immensely in the past couple of weeks that I've been browsing these boards, but I have another question. I was shooting high school football last night (no flash) and I had to use the full range of the 5x optical to get anywhere near decent shots. I was on shutter priority for the first 15 minutes or so, but the sun goes down so much earlier and quickly than it was for the last few games, so I switched to manual. I ended up finding a good balance at f 2.5 and a shutter speed of 1/200th, shooting ISO 400. I still found that the pictures were pretty dark and not as crisp as I would have liked them to be, but I couldn't take that shutter speed up at all without losing all of my light. The stadium is lit fairly well, but one of the guys at the camera shop today said that having to use the full zoom capacity causes light to have to travel further and further down the barrel, thus losing more and more of it. Any suggestions? Or were the factors surrouding this pretty much too limiting for it to be a good night for shooting.

Nighttime sports is typically around EV8, so if you were using ISO 400 and an aperture of f/2.5 the shutter speed would need to be 1/160th.

When you say the pictures were not as crisp as you would like, what do you mean? The whites were not white and the blacks black, or was there camera shake?

When you zoom you do spread the light out and things get dimmer, but for the amount of light and magnification we are talking about I don't think that is the contributing factor here.

Are you hand holding the camera or using a tripod? Could you get closer to the action to help minimize the amount of zoom and thus use a wider aperture to gather more light?

--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://www.shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp



I miss my camera, but see the light at the end of the tunnel

I think the problem I was having was with the EV. I want to say it said -1/3 or something like that? By not as crisp, I meant that they were better than previous shots I had taken, however they still did not have distinct fine lines. It may be been camera shake, but I found that it was mostly during close action shots that I would get the slight blur. I plan on getting a monopod soon, so that should take away some of that factor. Also, I was right on the sidelines, as close as anyone can get since I had field clearance for our school newspaper, etc.

Shay Stephens said:

Nighttime sports is typically around EV8, so if you were using ISO
400 and an aperture of f/2.5 the shutter speed would need to be
1/160th.

When you say the pictures were not as crisp as you would like, what
do you mean? The whites were not white and the blacks black, or
was there camera shake?

When you zoom you do spread the light out and things get dimmer,
but for the amount of light and magnification we are talking about
I don't think that is the contributing factor here.

Are you hand holding the camera or using a tripod? Could you get
closer to the action to help minimize the amount of zoom and thus
use a wider aperture to gather more light?

--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://www.shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp



I miss my camera, but see the light at the end of the tunnel

Click to expand...

Bleh, -1.3 I mean, not -1/3.

And on another note, your work is fantastic! I especially love the night shots and the one where you have the moon as it is rising. I counted 44 steps, so I'm assuming you took a picture every half an hour or so? That is truly an amazing picture.

Can you post one of the shots......I don't know what I can add but as Shay may know from past posts, I am wanting and am currently experimenting with night time shots as well as all low light shots. I do somewhat know what you are dealing with, it feels like a catch22. You need faster shutter speed to catch the action but due to the light can't bump it up because the picture becomes too dark.

The lights for sporting events, especially non pro, are bad. They illuminate but in a hazy kind of way. Shay, what fix do you have for this type of lighting? You answer this and it works, you will have fixed her problem and many of mine....2 birds with 1 stone!

If possible, please post a pic.....

Thanks

Taylor_Manson said:

Shay Stephens said:

Nighttime sports is typically around EV8, so if you were using ISO
400 and an aperture of f/2.5 the shutter speed would need to be
1/160th.

When you say the pictures were not as crisp as you would like, what
do you mean? The whites were not white and the blacks black, or
was there camera shake?

When you zoom you do spread the light out and things get dimmer,
but for the amount of light and magnification we are talking about
I don't think that is the contributing factor here.

Are you hand holding the camera or using a tripod? Could you get
closer to the action to help minimize the amount of zoom and thus
use a wider aperture to gather more light?

--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://www.shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp



I miss my camera, but see the light at the end of the tunnel

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Sure, give me a couple minutes to resize one and then throw it up on my webspace. I'll put one that turned out good of the batch, and then one that turned out so-so, then one bad one. What you were describing was the exact problem I had. I needed at least 1/250th to catch the action I thought, so I just knocked the aperture lower to bring in as much light as possible

n/t

guess html doesn't work

sorry, I'm new to the whole posting thing. And if they don't load right away try refreshing, sometimes this guy's server gets finnicky.

Ok, I have seen them.....

This is my opinion but take Shay's advice....This goes for both of us because I am where you are at on this.....

The first picture is the best - But, it is because the player looks as he is waiting for the snap of the ball (no action/movement) Background is a bit grainy but that is due in part to the minumum DOF and maybe ISO. Shay?

Second picture - higher shutter speed needed (my opinion) but what do you do in this environment? I feel that the lose of sharpness is do to motion blur. IF my eyes are right, there is a light right behind you on this shot. Lighting, this time, does not seem to be the issue but it looks like you had setup the camera for another part of the field (lower lighting) and the action came right at you which just so happens to be in good lighting. I say this because the player in the right of the seen pants look almost overexposed....If you had anticipated this shot or where waiting for action on this part of the field, you could have set the camera up for a faster shutter speed, stopped the action (sharpness) and still not under-exposed this shot.

Third Picture - I am curious if you were using "centered weighted" or "spot metering" on this shot? Bright around the center but darkens off fast to the sides. But, looks as if the action moved farther down the field and into different lighting.

I hope others give advise but here is my overall opinion on what I would do. Look around the field the next time there is a night game and see what parts of the field hold the best lighting. I know the how most HS and junior high schools football field look, the lighting is not always very even and there are shadows (maybe not real bad, but they are there). Once you know the best lighting areas, look for shoots in those areas. It would be good if there was a way to pre meter those areas before taking the shot. What I mean is look for a temp subject in those areas ( like a ref or player walking to the sideline, etc) and make note of the exposure settings. When the action heads your way,(Into the pre metered areas) set the camera to the noted settings and anticipate for the shot in that area....

I will be curious to see what Shay and others say but I feel that overall, your shots are good. Keep this mind, (I was told in a photo class I took) flip through any of the major sporting mags and you will not see very many night shot in open air stadiums for the same reasons you are not totally pleased with you shots now. Yes, there is some room for improvment but I think that you are very close to as good as it will get in these conditions....

Hope this helps!

Taylor_Manson said:

sorry, I'm new to the whole posting thing. And if they don't load
right away try refreshing, sometimes this guy's server gets
finnicky.

Click to expand...

Very good advice, thank you. When I took the first picture (number 22 in his stance) he was facing me on the hash (right near the sideline if you aren't familiar with football) and I believe on that side of the field that there is better lighting. I was talking with another guy and we both agreed that it must have been the angle of the big stadium lights. In the second picture, The guys ended up coming really close to me (which I didn't anticipate) and I pretty much snapped the photo in a jiffy. It's very possible that there was some camera shake on that one, simply because I was fighting the urge to jump out of the way. That picture, along with the 3rd one were taken on the side of the field that I felt had poorer ambient light. The 3rd was especially bad because it was down right in front of the endzone on that line where the lighting is terrible. It feels as if it's almost out of the angle the stadium lights show on.

Taylor,

I couldn't get the pics to come up. But, I've got to agree with what's already been posted.

You are going to have some trade-offs doing this type of shot. When the lighting is that poor, you'll have to decide whether you want to stop the action completely, or have a good exposure. IMO, in that sort of lighting, you'll seldom be able to use 1/250 (as your meter @-1.3EV's was telling you) and get a good exposure too. You'll be lucky to be able to use 1/125 or 1/100. But these speeds @ ISO400 will yield some very nice shots. Yes, you will get some arm and leg blurring. But your exposures will be usable and exhibit much less noise. Under-exposure @ high ISO's = max noise.

Steve

Taylor_Manson said:

Very good advice, thank you. When I took the first picture (number
22 in his stance) he was facing me on the hash (right near the
sideline if you aren't familiar with football) and I believe on
that side of the field that there is better lighting. I was talking
with another guy and we both agreed that it must have been the
angle of the big stadium lights. In the second picture, The guys
ended up coming really close to me (which I didn't anticipate) and
I pretty much snapped the photo in a jiffy. It's very possible that
there was some camera shake on that one, simply because I was
fighting the urge to jump out of the way. That picture, along with
the 3rd one were taken on the side of the field that I felt had
poorer ambient light. The 3rd was especially bad because it was
down right in front of the endzone on that line where the lighting
is terrible. It feels as if it's almost out of the angle the
stadium lights show on.

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/slo2k

You may have to post process if you want to keep the shutter speed high. Here is an example:



I copied the image and pasted it twice in PSE creating two new layers. On the middle layer I set the blending to "screen" and the opacity was 100%. The top layer was also set to "screen" but the opacity was set to 50% which brightened the image about 1.5 stops. I erased some of the bright white parts to keep the jerseys from over exposing. It's an option if you want to keep the high shutter speeds.

I do see camera shake, so that is contributing to the softness of the image too. Once you get that figured out, your images will look a lot better even if the players still exhibit some motion blur.

--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://www.shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp



I miss my camera, but see the light at the end of the tunnel

Shay: That post processing looks fantastic. Are there any sites or online tutorials...even books where I could read more about that type of stuff? I have photoshop 6 myself, although I'm somewhat limited to what I know how to do in it.

I don't have any sites or books I can think of other than a book I have heard others talk about, "Photoshop for photographers" or something close to that. I would suggest stopping by the retouching forum http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1006 they cover a lot of things. Spend enough time there and you will probably see it all discussed.

Taylor_Manson said:

Shay: That post processing looks fantastic. Are there any sites or
online tutorials...even books where I could read more about that
type of stuff? I have photoshop 6 myself, although I'm somewhat
limited to what I know how to do in it.

Click to expand...

--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://www.shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp



I miss my camera, but see the light at the end of the tunnel

Ok, thanks again.