Wow. The female offspring unit's high school team was playing its first home game Friday night and I thought, "Hey, I'll shoot the game and give the school a disc for the yearbook!" Wow. Shooting high school football with it's lighting is a gazillion times more challenging than shooting in an NCAA stadium.
I only used one camera body (D3) with my 400mm f2.8 lens. At game time, I was shooting at ISO 400 but light quickly began to fade. In no time, I was at ISO 1600 and even that wasn't enough to get a decent shutter speed. I tried ISO 2500 but had to push it t o ISO 3200. I set the D3 to Manual Exposure, took a few test shots at 1/500th, 1/400th and 1/320th second shutter speeds. I settled on 1/400th and kept it there the rest of the game.
This was no walk in the park. Noise and color balance issues are inherent to ahooting at ISO 3200. Uneven field lighting is an exposure nightmare. As if trying to be in position and focused isn't enough to worry about. Anyway, here are a few more shots, and if you want to see more, they're in my Facebook gallery.
FSU took a tough loss at Oklahoma today, but hopefully the team will bounce back next Saturday at home against BYU.
8 comments:
Great images of the high school game. Found the same to be true using the D300s. At the school here in Chattanooga I soon found out that the lights were directed more toward the center of the field and the end zones were "dead zones" would need a D3s to shoot that dark!
Mike;
Thanks for the suggestion on going to manual exposure for these lighting conditions. I shoot under the same conditions for my son's NAIA school. Auto ISO on my D90 works well during dusk, but in the full darkness it gets a bit wacky.
Did you add any additional workflow steps for the noise and colors?
Dale, I used the same processing I use for anything I shoot at high ISO, which includes Noise Ninja to get rid of thenoise wothout sacrificing too much detail. Also had to do some color balance correction but not much. If it had been an indoor basketball game, the colors would have been harder to clean up.
Very encouraging post as I shoot high school football each friday night. I always struggle with what settings to use. For a peek at the latest shots you can go to...
www.amiebeasley.zenfolio.com
under the recently added tab.
As always though you captured the moments!!
Did you use an external flash? (mounted on camera)
Mike
thanks for sharing - it is good to see that someone as good as you struggled with the high school lighting - thanks for your blog
No flash, Amie. ISO 3200.
It doesn't matter how good you think you are or may be, ChuckB... Light is light and being good or thinking you're good won't make it any brighter. The only thing that made it possible for me to get anything worth a flip was the D3 which can take aceptable images at ISO 3200. Even then, I got some blur int he hands, feet, etc. If I had used any Nikon body other than that, the noise would have given me fits.
Welcome to my world Mike. Haha ... If I ever get to shoot the large colleges it will seem easy with the better lighting systems they have. I shoot with a D-700 and same 400mm 2.8 lens you have and it's still a real test for sure. The very worst is high school volleyball . Can you say 6400 ISO ? Thanks for sharing your trip to the high school ranks with us. You rock !!!!!
Many of these high school stadiums are like shooting in the backyard by porch light. It's really a learning experience.
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