Canon 20D Help

[CowtownAngler]

Just bought the camera to take my daughter's HS softball game pictures. However, I'm not getting as quality pictures as I'd like as majority of their games are played at night. The day time pictures are just fine. I'm using Canon 75-300mm f/4.0 - 5.6 USM lens.

Due to being a novice, I haven't really played around enough with the manual settings to get it just right for the lighting at your typical HS ball fields. The lighting is alot better than your average little league fields as they take HS sports seriously in Texas, but it is no major league ballpark lighting.

Any lens or manual setting recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Arctirus]

What settings are you shooting at? For night sports photos you should probably be at 1600 or 3200 iso with your widest possible aperture.

[another view]

From what I've seen, that camera produces really nice ISO3200 files. I'm not a Canon shooter but I would start with that and shooting the lens wide open. Use Aperture Priority automatic (is it called Av in Canon-ese? ) so the camera will pick the shutter speed.

If you find that you're getting more shutter speed than you need, then either change the ISO to 1600 or close the lens down by a stop. Keep an eye on the histogram to make sure the exposure looks good.

This would also be a good time to use a custom white balance if it's lit and after dark. Some types of light don't work very well with auto white balance and alot of them are common with the type of light that may be used for this.