D40x night football games

<p>I just started using my Nikon D40x for nighttime football games. I use a Nikon 30 -70 VR lens. Yikes, the pictues are extremely blurry and have streaks of white in them. Does anyone know exactly what type of lens and the settings I should use? I am an extreme novice. That is why specifice settings and type of lens would be most helpful. Thank you</p>

<p>I'd guess that the streaks of white are images of lights which have blurred as the camera moved during the long exposures the camera used, likewise the blur of both people moving and camera movement.<br>

You need to pick the highest ISO setting you have available to you and then work in Manual or Tv mode and choose a shutter speed that will freeze the player's movement. This could be as high as 1/250 if they are crossing your view but slower 1/125 if they are approaching or going away from you. This may well result in dark pictures that you cannot review on the LCD .. but not to worry because it is possible to lift them in editing with the 'levels' or 'curves' tool. The former is easiest to use IMO. As a beginner I suggest that you use Tv mode rather than Manual and the camera will choose wide open or a correct aperture, it is quite a good 'fail safe' way of working. In Tv mode you have selected the critical factor in freezing the action, the shutter speed. Fast action requires a high shutter speed. The drawback in this situation of low light is that because the lens is wide open [largest aperture = smallest number] you have minimum depth of field so accurate focusing is critical. As you learn more you will find that photography is an endless compromise .... ie. the high ISO results in more noise, large aperture has minimum DoF, long shutter speed blurred movement and so on. <br>

An alternative approach when using a slower speed is to be panning [ following the action with the camera] but with humans this doesn't work so well as we move our legs and arms as we run.<br>

Unfortunately you may find that your lens looses aperture as you zoom out, I don't know it, and this may mean shots taken at full zoom may not respond to treatment [levels] as well as those at wide angle. <br>

You ask for a lens suggestion and here you should be aware that there are 'prime' lens, they don't zoom, which can have a maximum aperture of f/1.1 or f/1.4 which can help as they let in more light than what you have. Even an f/1.8 or f/2 lens will improve matters sumwhat.<br>

A final point .. the brightness tool raises everything, often to a horrible grey mush, whereas with the Levels tool you can selectively just raise the midtones and highlights while retaining the nice dark lower tones<br>

I hope that you will invest in an editing program that has Levels and/or curves tools along with layers because you will find that once you have got past first base with the program the combination of editor and camera will help you ... to me they are complimentary tools.</p>

 

<p>Lana - </p>

<p>On a Nikon the Tv mode is S - shutter preferred - </p>

<p>D40x will give you decent images at 1600 + iso - for your lens - I'd suggest a 70 - 200 f2.8 - See if you can rent one or get a used one cheap. </p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

<p>In my experience, the light levels at kids' rec-league night games may not be enough to get any kind of action shots with the average amateur rig, such as yours (or mine). I suspect that low light is your main problem. But to maximize your chances:<br>

(1) set the sensitivity (often incorrectly called "ISO") to its highest value, typically 1600, 3200, or 6400;<br>

(2) set the focus mode to continuous (usually you will have three or four options, single-shot auto-focus, continuous auto-focus, 'automatic' auto-focus, and manual focus); and<br>

(3) contrary to the prior suggestion, I think you're much better off using <em>aperture</em>-priority (A or Av) instead of shutter-priority (S or Tv) mode, because you want the fastest shutter speed you can get, given the maximum sensitivity of your camera and the maximum aperture of your lens, so use A or Av and set it to f/4 or f/4.5 or whatever is the maximum aperture (smallest f/stop number).</p>

<p>You may still not have enough light to get good shots. Remember that in low light, auto-focus slows down. Even if the auto-focus focuses correctly before you shoot, if you're getting shutter speeds slower than about 1/500 s, some motion will get blurred, and once the shutter speed gets slower than about 1/125 s, you will have a lot of issues. If somehow you have enough light to that your shutter speeds are, say, 1/1000 s, then change the aperture to f/5.6 or whatever, to give yourself a little more depth of field and hopefully make focus accuracy a little less critical. But shutter-priority is not the answer, because if you insist the camera shoot at, say, 1/500 s, and at maximum aperture it really needs 1/100 s, the shot will just turn out very dark. Good luck.</p>

 

<p>With due respect to Dave I would suggest that a sharp photo with perhaps less than perfect colour is preferable to a blurred image so a relatively high shutter speed is essential. The fact that the result is dark and cannot be seen on the camera monitor is simply how we worked back in the days of film when we saw the results after processing but we today have the advantages of editing programs which compliment the camera and raise its potential to capture the images we want. As I suggested above with the use of levels or curves. So first step is to get a good editing program and learn to use it rather than spending money on more equipment.</p>