[ljkomel]

I have a D50 and take a lot of Football & Baseball pictures. This year I will be under the lights. I currently use a 70-300 VR lens with a 600 flash. I still can't get decent shots. What settings do you suggest? I am allowed on the sidelines.

[jcdill]

I have a D50 and take alot of Football & Baseball pictures. This year I will be under the lights. I currently use a 70-300 VR lens with a 600 flash. I still can't get decent shots. What settings do you suggest? I am allowed on the sidelines.

The reason you can't get good sports photos at night is because of the low light. A flash is useless in this situation - unless the play is *right* on the sideline you (and your flash) are too far away to do any good (and your 70-300 would be too long to get a decent photo when the action was close enough to be captured with a flash).

In order to have the best chance to get decent sports photos in low light you need to do the following:

1) Use a very fast lens, f/2.8 or faster. These are expensive lenses - you may want to rent one initially.

2) You need a camera with good quality high ISO images. It is uncommon for a prosumer camera like your D50 to produce good quality high ISO images, but I don't know your camera's particulars. You will need to do your own research on your particular camera and on other models to determine if it has high enough quality at high ISO settings.

3) Manually set the ISO to 1600 (or higher, if your camera produces good images at a higher ISO).

4) Set the camera to aperture priority, then set the aperture to the widest setting for the lens. This will give you the fastest shutter speed possible for the light conditions.

5) Shoot in the sections of the field that are most brightly lit. Lighting varies at different locations around the field depending on the location of the lights.

6) Shoot in RAW. This gives you the most data. Then you can process the RAW files yourself rather than leave it to the camera to process them into jpegs. You will always get better quality when you have all the data and can adjust the processing yourself.

7) Use the latest/best RAW converters. Lightroom 3 beta has received rave reviews on the quality of the noise reduction tools in its built-in RAW converter software.

Also see my previous answers to similar questions:

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/photog...xt-391182.html

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/photog...me-343925.html

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/photog...si-307843.html

Good luck.

[Milo Dolezal]

Football games are reasonably well lit. You should be able to produce images of acceptable quality.

Use tripod ( or at least monopod ) and ASA no less then 800. (... however, the lower ASA you'll use - the better quality images you will bring back ). If you can, set your D50 manually to type of lights used to light the field. Flash is in this situation quite useless. You can use flash after the game to shoot players as they leave the field or as they stand on the baseline. But even here, you will have lots of black background.

I personally don't think you have to shoot in RAW. Raw images will fill your memory card too fast and take longer to record - especially with low end camera like D50. Moreover, shooting in RAW will limit how fast you can shoot. And that's exactly what you don't need in shooting fast action like football w/o a doubt is.

JPEGs are fine. Even Sport Illustrated photographers shoot in JPEG. You can correct JPEG images in just about any basic software.

Go to KenRockwell.com to learn what you can do with your camera in lighting conditions you've described. This web site is good source of information.

[jcdill]

I have a D50 and take alot of Football & Baseball pictures. This year I will be under the lights. I currently use a 70-300 VR lens with a 600 flash. I still can't get decent shots. What settings do you suggest? I am allowed on the sidelines.

A Tripod is useless in sports photography - the action moves much too fast. A monopod can be helpful when you are using a long lens, but I find that a steady hand and IS lens are more than sufficient for most lenses up to 200mm-300mm because you need a minimum shutter speed (that is faster than sufficient for the lens length) to capture acceptable sports photos anyway. A monopod is more critical if you are using a longer lens (e.g. 400mm or longer) where it's more difficult to hold the lens steady enough, even at high shutter speeds. However, a monopod can be quite dangerous on the sideline. You don't want to trip someone as you try to move out of the way when a play comes over the sideline! (That will be the end of your sideline access for sure!) If you get a monopod, practice with it at a lot of practice games before you take it to a night game.

Sports Illustrated photogs are very experienced photogs. They are using cameras that are FAR better than a D50 and using lenses that are FAR better than the 70-300 lens you use. When you don't have the experience or kit of a SI photog, you need to do everything possible to maximize your chances for a good photo. Shooting in RAW gives you that extra chance to produce a good image in low light. You can NOT make acceptable corrections to low-light JPEGs that you can make to low-light RAW images. When you let the camera throw out ~90% of the data it gathered at the moment you pressed the shutter (when you let the camera save the images in JPEG rather than RAW) you are giving away the negative to your image and gambling that the camera did the best job of converting the captured RAW image when it made the JPEG. This is not the path to success.

A D50 doesn't have an acceptable frames-per-second rate (2.5 FPS) to shoot "fast" for sports photos. (This brings us back to gear - SI photogs use cameras with a MUCH faster frame rate than a D50, such as a D3 with 9 FPS or a Canon 1d with up to 10 FPS). Plus, shooting lots of crappy photos is not the path to success. It's much better to turn off the burst mode and learn to time your shot, and shoot a few good photos, rather than hold the button and "pray" that you got one so-so photo.

Finally, I strongly urge you to stay far away from most of the advice found at kenrockwell.com - his advice is often admired by amateurs but laughed at by most professional photogs.

Olympus and Panasonic rumors Blog Archive Does Ken Rockwell know that the Panasonic LX3 exists?

Review Site: Ken Rockwell

Flickr: Discussing Ken Rockwell Does It Again in I Shoot Film

[Milo Dolezal]

It is all matter of opinion JCDill. I agree on some points with you and not on others... As you probably know, every photographer has his/her "own" way of approaching given situations so their opinions will differ.

Just want to add: monopod is very helpful in low light situations. I would suggest that you get one. Watch NFL game on TV and you will see how many photographers use monopod. I guess poster's lens is F3.5 to F5.6, the one supplied with the camera, which is relatively slow lens - even with the VR function. VR function is good for stopping lens shakes - but it won't stop fast moving football player in low-light situation.

I agree with you, tripod is not the best way to go - but I assumed in my previous answer that this is not a NFL game but high school event where he will have more freedom moving around. I used tripod many times at such a games w/o incident. Also, tripod with appropriate head is great for panning.

As far as KR goes... I assumed poster is not a professional photographer since he/she is asking more-less basic questions a pro would not ask. I also do not believe everything KR says - but overall, he provides reasonably good information for novice / amateur photographers. He is certainly a good starting point. If poster doesn't like what he/she reads, he/she can always continue to anther web-page.

[kentharrismecom]

Friday Night Light pics are not as complicated as some make them sound, but the proverbial quality / cost dilemma is more relevant here than in any other situation. I have had many photographs published in local papers, just based on word of mouth. Only yesterday I received a call from a paper requesting to publish 6 of the pics I took at last Friday's game. The equipment I use is as follows:

Camera: Cannon 50D
Flash: Cannon 580EXII Speedlite mounted 24" below the lens on a monopod
Lens: Cannon 70 - 200 2.8

Those that say a flash is useless aren't using a good flash. Secondly, the flash mounted below the lens makes all the difference in the work. It significantly reduces the red eye you normally get and will get light under the helmet where a shadow is normally cast. I've taken 1,000's if not 10's of 1,000's of photographs and have never had anyone question the use of a flash. All photographs are shot in manual mode at 3200iso, 500 shutter Speed, and 2.8 aperture. I only shoot in jpeg format. You be the judge of the results...

http://www.harrisfamily.phanfare.com/4902855_5483632

Happy Shooting

[Milo Dolezal]

BRAHMAS... Pierce College in Woodland Hills ? :-)

Friday Night Light pics are not as complicated as some make them sound, but the proverbial quality / cost dilemma is more relevant here than in any other situation. I have had many photographs published in local papers, just based on word of mouth. Only yesterday I received a call from a paper requesting to publish 6 of the pics I took at last Friday's game. The equipment I use is as follows:

Camera: Cannon 50D
Flash: Cannon 580EXII Speedlite mounted 24" below the lens on a monopod
Lens: Cannon 70 - 200 2.8

Those that say a flash is useless aren't using a good flash. Secondly, the flash mounted below the lens makes all the difference in the work. It significantly reduces the red eye you normally get and will get light under the helmet where a shadow is normally cast. I've taken 1,000's if not 10's of 1,000's of photographs and have never had anyone question the use of a flash. All photographs are shot in manual mode at 3200iso, 500 shutter Speed, and 2.8 aperture. I only shoot in jpeg format. You be the judge of the results...

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