D700 and Sports Photgraphy

I don't usually do sports photography most portrait sessions but my son has begged me to shoot his games. Advice Advice plz The games are in the evening so they start about 5 and can go to 11 at night. So my ISO changes along with eveything else. Reccomendations? I'm trying to shoot at 2.8 I have the 70 to 200mm lense and my camera guy is trying to sell me the converter that goes to 400mm concerned about the night time stuff the most!!! It gets Dark really dark Help anybody?
 

goz63

Senior Member
The 70-200 will work well with a tele-converter but not for night games. It limits your f-stop to 5.6 with that lens. You should be able to get most of your shots at 200mm I would think. I set my camera to ISO 200 with auto feature for a max of 800 most of the time and a shutter speed of min/125sec and aperture mode. I would not shoot less than a shutter speed of 125sec to stop the movement. I also use a monopod to help orient the camera consistently. I find I will tilt the camera slightly if I am not paying attention to that. With the action on the field that is hard to keep track of. Play around with the settings and let us see how you do.
 

LensWork

Senior Member
You did not say what sport you will be shooting, but for most any type of action sport, 1/250 is the bare minimum to freeze the action. Your D700 will yield images with very little noise up to ISO 2500. If it is high school football you are shooting, most high schools stadiums lighting at night games will require an exposure setting of approximately 1/250, f/2.8 @ ISO 1600.
 

Joseph Bautsch

New member
A Tel-converter just will not work for what what you want. Do your camera set up as recommended by LensWork. You will also want to set the auto focus on AF-C. That way you can hold the shutter button halfway down and not have to keep refocusing when the action moves to a different location. The auto focus will refocus as you track the action on the field. Also I would recommend using (AF-area mode) Dynamic area.
 

Gladiator

Senior Member
You did not say what sport you will be shooting, but for most any type of action sport, 1/250 is the bare minimum to freeze the action. Your D700 will yield images with very little noise up to ISO 2500. If it is high school football you are shooting, most high schools stadiums lighting at night games will require an exposure setting of approximately 1/250, f/2.8 @ ISO 1600.

What about with a 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6. I tried as you can see, but failed miserably so i gave up after 5-6 shots. :-( Son was disappointed since they were finals.

I ended up with 1/13 s (argh), when shooting at 300mm, f/5.6 and 1250 ISO. What were my options, would boosting ISO to 2500 be enough to reach 1/250, or should i just stick to day games until i can buy a 2.8? :) Thanks
 

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Joseph Bautsch

New member
I have the 70-300mm lens. It's not going to give you the speed you need for night time football even with an ISO of 3200. With this lens I would stick to day time shooting of football games. An f/2.8 lens will give you a couple of stops more room to work with for night games and getting stop motion. A shutter speed of 1/250 is ideal for stop motion but you can also get decent stop motion using 1/125. It's not as good as 1/250 but it works. You might give some thought to using a 50mm, f/1.8 lens. It's not an expensive lens and at f/1.8 you should be able to shoot at 1/250 with a reasonable ISO level. Maybe not the telephoto you want but with a little patience and allowing the action to get closer you can get some really good shots.
 

Gladiator

Senior Member
Well at least it wasn't me :)

As for the 50mm i was thinking of getting a 50 mm f/1.4 AF-D soon anyways for very low light situations, or just save for a lens i end up needing a whole lot more being a 14-24mm f/2.8 or 20-35 f/2.8 since i rarely shoot sports. My medium-range plan was to get the wide-angle, then the 70-200mm f/2.8 or the 80-200mm /2.8 (a lot cheaper) and then the 24-70mm f/2.8 and then i would be in business, poor but in business ;-) Not counting a good macro and PC-E lens argh
 
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markaphillips

New member
I use a 70-200 F2.8 VR II on D700 for shooting rugby (usually in low light, but not night time), I've never used the TC201, to be honest I prefer having the option of a faster lens and then cropping if needed (the image quality is pretty good even at high ISO). Having said that if I was ever going to buy another converter it would be the TC201 III.
Mark
 
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