Need help shooting football in low light stadiums.

I've been photographing sports, especially football, for several years but I'm trying to figure out how to make the best of the poor lighting available at most high school football stadiums with my D300. I've had several opportunities to photograph some college games and the lighting is much better so I'm ok there. However, when I shoot a high school game I almost always have to max out the ISO at 6,400 and have my 70 - 200mm Nikon lens wide open at f/2.8 to get anywhere near the 1/500th of a second I consider to be the minimum shutter speed I shoot football games at.

I would really rather shoot at a lower ISO and with my lens stopped down to at least f/4 but if I do these things my shutter speed will be much too slow to freeze the action. Is there anything I can do, either when I'm shooting or afterwards on the computer, to compensate for such bad lighting?

I have considered using flash, but I really don't have the equipment to do that right now.

Umm...something isn't right. I have the same camera and lens, and rarely get into the ISO 3200 range @ 1/500. Change your metering mode to center-weighted instead of matrix and see if that helps.

Anthony, thank you for your reply. I'll certainly give that a try but will changing to center weighted make that much of a difference? If it will, can you explain why or is there a webpage I can go to which will explain this?

Also, which of the centerweighted areas would you recommend I use, 6, 8, 10, 13 or AVG?

Bulldog said:

...but will changing to center weighted make that much of a difference? If it will, can you explain why...
Also, which of the centerweighted areas would you recommend I use, 6, 8, 10, 13 or AVG?

Click to expand...

Absolutely it will make a difference. You have 3 metering modes:

Matrix: The camera evaluates the entire scene within the viewfinder. This is the default setting, and is usually good for most situations.

Spot: Usually used for back-lit scenes and meters only at the center-most point. This setting can be useful for still life shots, but I wouldn't recommend it on moving subjects.

Center-weighted: Gives priority to the center, but also considers the rest of the frame.

At a football stadium, the lights are all pointed down towards the field. You don't care about how well lit the crowd is, you want to focus on the action. Specifically, the player you're photographing. I wouldn't get overly concerned with the actual setting number. You can play with it to see if it gives you better results, but it probably wouldn't be noticeable.

D300s
70-200mm f/2.8 shot @ 200mm
ISO 280
1/500 @ f/2.8
7:36pm

This isn't exactly a night time shot in full darkness like it would be late in the game around 9:00 pm...but even after twilight I'm still @ ISO 280.

You can try setting your camera to manual exposure (in center-weighted or spot metering mode) and take an exposure reading off of the grass. Grass meters at about 18% gray which will give you proper exposure thereby eliminating the dark background and white uniforms that can confuse any auto metering system. The lighting at night sporting events is constant, so automatic exposure is not needed (the corners of the end zone may be a little darker than the center of the field).

Thanks LensWork, I'll give that a try. What about intentionally underexposing the shots by one stop to either set the ISO one stop slower or stopping down my lens by one stop? If I were to do this, could I then correct the exposure on my computer without adversely affecting the image? Also, is there any way to minimize the noise in my images when shooting at 3,200 - 6,400 ISO?

Nice shot A.H. I'd post one or two of my own pics here to show you what I mean if I knew how. I'm still trying to figure out how to do that directly from my computer. When I click on the "Insert Image" icon, the only option I get is to upload from a URL.

Would you consider panning instead? 1/60 - 1/120 will significantly lower your ISO level.

Yes it will but sometimes the action is coming right at you and panning wouldn't work. Also, in football games not all the players are moving in the same direction or at the same speed so that would be a problem as well. For a player or two running down the sideline at the same speed though, panning would work and would be a cool effect. Thanks for the suggestion.

Yeah, panning isn't really an option for sports like football.

Bulldog said:

Nice shot A.H. I'd post one or two of my own pics here to show you what I mean if I knew how. I'm still trying to figure out how to do that directly from my computer. When I click on the "Insert Image" icon, the only option I get is to upload from a URL.

Click to expand...

Look at the Quick Reply box bottom right hand corner....click on the Go Advanced.........that should allow you to just upload from your computer.

Fotojack, I just tried that but I still get only the URL option. It must have to do with the fact that I just joined yesterday. I guess it'll take more time to give me that option.