Night High school football

<p>So I get to drive to Kansas and take high school football night photos of my grandson playing. (and my grandaughter cheerleading) The field is very nice and up to date on lights. (Probably still dark) I have a D-200 with a Nikon 50 mm 1.8 (for cheerleading) and a Nikon 80-200 2.8 for the football. I understand the problems about staying around 800 ISO and 1/250 on shutter. Now my question on flash. Most say to leave your flash at home. My D-200 has built in flash. I also have a Sunpack 555 auto thryster flash. Can I put a slave trigger on the Sunpack and try to reach out on the field further for some shots?</p>

<p>Jim -</p>

<p>I'd recommend leaving it (Sunpak) at home...basically - unless you're shooting from the sidelines, it wouldn't be enough to reach the field. Same for the on board flash.</p>

<p>If you get ambitious - you might be able to rig up a pocket wizard to trigger the sunpak (you'd need 2 - one for flash one for camera body) and then mount the sunpak somewhere close to the field. If you go that route - you'd want to clear it with someone in authority and make sure it is double secured. I don't believe that you can fire a sunpak remotely from a d200...unless it has a slave mode.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

<p>Even though the field looks bright, you'll be up at very high iso to get anything near stop-action with that lens. Unless you're 30 feet or less away, you won't get anything useful out of your flash.</p>

<p>Read up on the Sports forum too there's probably good stuff there. I used to shoot a lot of football, never used flash except for some close-up off the field shots. I used lenses from 1.4 to 5.6, at night I wouldn't go past 3.5, too hard to manage and "see" through the viewfinder. I would shoot Fuji 1000 at night and could expose betwen 800-1250 without much trouble. I use D200s but don't shoot sports anymore, I have shot some theater events and I could get away with 180 f2.8 at about ISO 800 and 1/125 and looks pretty good. I think 1/250 will be possible if lights are good, my work was in dim light.</p>

<p>Most rural Texas high school stadiums I've been to have EV 6 or 7 lighting at night, and that's only mid-field. There's often a sharp drop in lighting at the goals, to as little as EV 4 or 5. At ISO 1600 this works out to f/2.8 at 1/125th sec or 1/250th sec.</p>

<p>So my 300/4.5 AI Nikkor was pretty much useless for night games. At full pop a single SB-800 couldn't provide enough illumination out to midfield to make much difference. And even on a bracket, at that distance there was a tendency toward harsh highlights and red eye effect. You'd need at least two flash units mounted away from the camera to get enough lighting and to avoid harsh direct flash and red eye. I've seen some folks mount flash units on monopods to create more distance between lens and flash, but nowadays most seem to rely on cranking up the ISO to get more natural looking photos.</p>

<p>Given a choice between underexposure and motion blur at lower ISOs and noise at higher ISOs, I'd choose a higher ISO, faster shutter speed and deal with the noise later. Most folks (other than photographers) won't notice high ISO noise or the effects of noise reduction to control it. But they will definitely notice motion blur and underexposed photos.</p>

<p>But for photos of your granddaughter cheerleading at the sidelines you can use a lower ISO and flash, no problem. I've done that many times for family members and the photos almost always came out well. The only exception was the halftime cheerleading exhibitions at mid-field, which present the same challenges at photographing the game itself.</p>

<p>As a courtesy to the athletes, you should not use flash (this applies to most sports photography). </p>

<p>I've shot some high school football games at night myself, and found either an f1.8 or f1.4 lens most useful. As for flash, the last two I did I set up two White Lightning X3200 monolights on the sideline. Each has the equivalent of about 20-25 of your flash. That did give me enough light. The light from the field lights on the scene isn't all that much, really.<br>

Elliot--<br>

In my own experience with high school football and co-ed summer softball leagues, the light doesn't bother them if you are shooting from roughly a 90 degree angle. While I wasn't allowed to put lights in the end zone, the coaches didn't mind them on the sidelines. Keep in mind the flash is so brief if barely seems to registers, especially outdoors. Remember that I'm using mega-flash here, and received no complaints.<br>

Kent in SD</p>

<p>Try some shots of the field and chimp them before the game, with a view to finding some manual settings that may work for the majority of shots.</p>

<p>The field actually is pretty bright at most of these facilities, but everything around is black or dim for all practical purposes, so it can be very hard to meter if there is background included. Embrace high ISOs. Noise is your friend in a situation like this, not an enemy, if you mean to get pictures. ISO 800? Why? Is that as high as your camera goes? Don't let mindless method dictate what you do in different situations. Same goes for speed. You may want motion blur in some pictures, so 1/250 sec is just one of many possible settings. With f/2.8 and ISO 1600 or 3200 you should get some decent, if slightly noisy, pictures. Post-process them for noise (shoot RAW of course). Any way, sports photography was always <em>supposed</em> to be gritty (oldspeak, "grainy;" newspeak "noisy").</p>

<p>Flash power falls off with the square of distance. Whether you're in the stands or on the sidelines, that means you get a lot of bright foreground with little light left for the players. Even if you have enough power to reach out 25 yards or more, it won't work for that reason. If you use available light, white uniforms and stadium lights may dominate the setting, leaving faces dark.</p>

<p>The solution is to use available light in manual mode. Grass (probably artificial too) has an 18% or so reflectance. You can spot meter the field at various points and remember the settings. Any shutter speed of 1/60 or so will stop action well enough with a little timing and luck. That still means a VR lens is necessary to eliminate camera shake, and an aperture/ISO setting to accommodate that speed.</p>

<p>Thanks to everyone. And to answer JDM's question my D200 goes to 1600 and also has Hi-0.3, Hi 0.7, and Hi-1. So I can go higher on the ISO and work on the noise later. In reading other forums It sounded like ISO 800 was pretty high to get nice pictures.</p>

<p>This might be a good time to rent a D700.</p>

<p>Here's something else you can try. Shooting from the sidelines, you use your 50mm f1.8 lens @f1.8, camera set to ISO 800 or 1600. Buy a Better Beamer and attach it to the flash. I think you would be able to get some shots using that.<br>

Kent in SD</p>

<p>Just want to comment on the better beamer and wider angle lenses, (50mm is wide angle for me ;-)) - if I used the better beamer on my 70-200 @ 70mm, I only get the flash at a portion of the image. I usually do not use the better beamer when shooting the 70-200 at the shorter focal lengths because of that. However, it can give interesting effects e.g. http://www.photo.net/photo/9657977 <- the warmer left portion is because the flash is concentrated in that region, and I'd also gelled it with a 1/4 cto.</p>

<p>If using a 70mm lens, D200 + better beamer for distant subjects, it will be very obvious to see in camera when the pre-flash goes off, only a rectangular region in frame being illuminated...</p>

<p>Jim, use high iso, even hi-1 as necessary - better to get a noisy picture with motioned stopped versus something clean but blurry. Definitely shoot raw, and apply a noise reduction pass onto the image. May not be pretty at 100%, but for web and smaller prints it is fine.<br>

Alvin</p>

<p>Thanks for all the suggestions. I may invest in Noise Nija just to try on these pictures. ($79.) I'm pretty sure I can get a Press pass to at least get to the edge of the field. Thanks again, you guys and gals are great.</p>

<p>If the stadium has "TV" light levels, you can get by with ISO 1600, f2.8 & 1/500 sec. The D200 really doesn't produce acceptable results at ISO 1600. You will do OK with the 1.8 and the cheerleaders, especially considering you won't need the 1/500 as much. If the light levels are lower, all bets are off.</p>

<p>For the flash, you can probably use that with the cheerleaders, but for the play on the filed, it won't get you anything.</p>

<p>My experience has been that a good tracking technique can allow you to manage motion blur and add a feeling of movement to the shots. For me, a monopod is a must when shooting football at night. I don't know how the D200 handles ISO1600, but I've shot with a D300 at 1600 - 3200 with only minor degradation. I also use a 70-200, and have used it with a 1.4x teleconverter until it got completely dark apart from the lights, then used it alone. Shoot in manual mode, and chimp for the histograms.</p>

<p>Yeah...we don't allow flash out here for sports or theatre. Its going to be hard to freeze action at 1/250 though. You might have to stretch to ISO 1600. When I did sports with film I used 1600 and sometimes pushed to 3200. In many ways it was easier because film noise (ie grain) was expected. Now we try to be perfect in all conditions. Made a rod for our own backs.</p>

<p>I haven't seen your particular field, but in my own somewhat limited experience I've not yet seen a field lit well enough where I could get 1/250 at a high school game. Keep in mind I have concentrated on small towns in Iowa, SD, and Minnesota though. I was scoping one out today. From the looks of it, I sure hope they allow me to set up a few monolights! There are a total of four rather anemic looking light poles. I'm guessing without additional light I might be looking at ISO 3200, 1/30, f1.4! I might head to another field/game instead.</p>

<p>Kent in SD</p>

<p><a href="http://www.photo.net/sports-photography-forum/00Mx2w">http://www.photo.net/sports-photography-forum/00Mx2w</a><br>

It's an older thread, but some samples in link above, with and without flash, typically at ISO-800 and 3200 respectively.</p>