Saturday Night Football

[k1par]

This is maybe the third football game I have had a chance to take photos of. The game is just starting to come back in my area with only two schools having teams. This team (maroon) is a third year high school program and still play at the club level. The games are played at night with the conditions going for some sunlight to lights only and not the best of lighting. All were taken with a Canon 30D with a Canon 70-300 IS Lens. ISO 1600/3200 f/ 4.0-5.6 shutter speeds as low as 1/200. As alway C&C welcome and in this case highly encouraged!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

That's It......

[JohnG]

Some feedback:

1) Some noise evident even in this shot. Not much interesting going on - qb taking the snap but no real action, faces, emotion.

2) Nice capture but way too much dead space in the frame. You need to frame much tighter (I see you were at 130mm) and cut out dead space.

3) Very nice capture. Remove the noise and you'll have a keeper here.

4) Nice capture. Again - remove the noise. It's a tad soft I'm guessing it's heavily cropped.

5) As with shot 1 not much going on here. Shots of the QB under center are tough to make interesting - you need a real good expression which is tough to get in low light.

6) Still too much noise left. And too much dead space. I recommend shooting portrait orientation for about 90% of shots (unless your shooting tight shots -torso only). Shooting landscape like this leaves dead space and you don't end up framing tight enough to get sharp photos. I.E. look at how blurred the letters are. Part motion blur but also framed way too loosely to begin with.

So, shoot portrait and frame MUCH tighter in-camera. You'll get sharper photos that way. And you should alter your approach to noise reduction as there is still too much noise in these. In the long run you'll need much better glass if you want to shoot under the lights - a sad fact of HS football.

[k1par]

Thanks John,

I did very little post processing on these as I wanted the C&C. As I said before it is really a new sport for me to shoot so your comments are appreciated very much. As for the glass I fully agree but the budget (and the oil tank) says otherwise. Thanks again.

[bluesman graham]

Nice set K1par my choice being #2 (perhaps with a little closer crop), but not as close as #3. & #4 for the oomph! expressions. Kind regards Graham.

[PhotoCarp]

John,
Any suggestions on how to go about removing noise? I have to shoot a night game next week.

[JohnG]

PhotoCarp wrote:

John,
Any suggestions on how to go about removing noise? I have to shoot a night game next week.

Well first suggestion is to have as little noise as possible in the first place.

To that end you need photos exposed properly IN-CAMERA. And exposed for faces not uniforms. Any adjustment to exposure after the fact - whether in RAW conversion or in levels/curves is going to bring out more noise.

So, the first question is - do you have the proper gear to do that? What gear are you shooting with? If you don't have the proper camera / lens to shoot available light you should strongly consider the use of an external flash. So what gear are you shooting with?

[PhotoCarp]

Canon EOS 1Ds MarkII. I prefer to use my EF 100-400L IS f/4.5-5.6. For night games I tend to go to ISO1600 because 3200 comes out too noisy. I have it set for noise reduction.

For backup and closer shots I carry my Canon 20D with a EF 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS. I also have an EF 70-200L f/2.8

Here are two that I shot last year with the 1Ds and 100-400 1/160 f/5.6 ISO 1600
1) Clear night, Cedar Grove High School, NJ


2) Rainy night, David Brearly HS, Kenilworth, NJ

Cropping may seem odd but a picture paints a thousand words. Anyone knowing what #64 had gone through would find it poignant that he was celebrating their victory by himself.

[JohnG]

Well, the exposures and noise levels look good - at least at this size with regards to noise (i.e. exposure is good regardless but at this image size noise looks OK). So, as long as you don't care about capturing any action continue what you're doing. But trying to capture action at 1/160 shutter speeds will be difficult.

[PhotoCarp]

JohnG wrote:

But trying to capture action at 1/160 shutter speeds will be difficult.

True. You can see the motion blur of the foot in #1 above.

Here is another also at 1/160

[JohnG]

Yep that's an example already showing too much blur for my tastes.