Football at Night - Advice

Photo Plod

Photo Plod

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Name
Chris
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Hello all,

I've shot several football matches now, but have only attempted one match at night - it was a bit of a disaster.

Has anybody got any good advice to get good-looking shots at night?

The only way I can really see of doing things is to crank up the ISO, but unfortunately the D80 hasn't got the high ISO capability of some newer cameras.

I'll be at Woking, who have quite a good ground with floodlighting.
 
Hi. I see your D80's iso goes fairly high
• ISO 2000 equiv. (HI 0.3) *
• ISO 2500 equiv. (HI 0.7) *
• ISO 3200 equiv. (HI 1.0) *
So depending on what lens you have, you might be able to get a reasonable shutter speed.
I find that there are usually patches on the pitch with better light - around the goals, in the centre, so you might want to concentrate on those areas. Good luck!
 
Usually, for most sports, I use my 80 - 200 f/2.8 lens.

The D80 does go to those ISO levels, but believe me - it isn't very good beyond about ISO 1250! I shoot quite a lot of ice hockey and don't usually go beyond 1000 - 1250. In many ways, the conditions are similar to football - albeit it's indoors - but I'm not really sure how the lighting compares.

I've emailed the regular Woking photographer to see if he minds me coming along - hopefully he will also have some advice to give :)
 
Well Carol will probably have been in the same situation, as will many of the guys on here, 4pm cold dark winters afternoon, floodlights on and you've got your 70-200 f2.8 lens and your shooting around 1/250-400 sec @ 6400 ISO, bloody nightmare :lol:.

Obviously if your shutter speed gets to low, then as you probably know just start shooting players coming towards you rather than across your view.
 
i would run F2.8 iso 3200 and try to run around the 500 mark i get reasonable results from them

would love to have 6400 ISO lol would be a dream

need to re process this via noise ninja to reduce the noise but other than that it's reasonable lol

settings for the picture below is what i suggested above


IMG_0013 by wegotitugetit, on Flickr
 
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Alex - that does look very good, especially when kept to a smaller size for web use. I'll give it a go - if the D50 can look like that at ISO 3200, hopefully the D80 will be able to cope as well. I haven't ever had very good experiences up at that level, though. That being said, when I last shot a match at night, the floodlights were almost non-existent. This is at a much higher level (Blue Square South), and I understand from the club photographer that the floodlights have been improved recently.

Here's hoping - will post some results later!

Many thanks for all the advice.
 
i now and again travel with our club been the club photographer that is and have seen some brilliant looking lighting and turned out to be the worst as it causes to much shadow becuase of how strong the lighting is

i find the home games are better but that is more for the fact been a regualr ground i know where to go

i didnt produce that over night i have been doing sports for 8 months now as in full time club photographer im waiting for the summer to come for better photos ops

i miss some really good ops recently due to bad lighting

i have got one where he is flying through the air parrelle to the ground looks good but poor lighting and rain spoilt it abit
 
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