Friday Night Lights

This is a photograph from friday nights football game that I posted over on the Sports Forum, but wanted it here as well. I have struggled with getting good exposures under poor lighting conditions at this field. I have consulted a pro at one of the states larger newspapers and have tried to incorporate his suggestions. This was shot with the D70 and 80-200 at 1/400 and f2.8 with the addition of some light from the SB800. Interested in your critiques.

Something about this shot just doesn’t work for me. I think it is partially the composition and partially the lighting. It looks like one heck of a play is going on and that you timed the shot right but I don’t like how so many of the players are cut off. I think the crop is too tight (or the composition if this has not been cropped). The lighting also looks unnatural for me. I don’t like the black background and how it looks like an obvious flash shot. I am certainly not a good enough flash photographer to tell you how to make it look like I would like it to look but those are my feelings about the picture. I guess maybe cranking up the ISO some more and using a faster lens.

Greg

Well, this is flash-in-your-face shot -- most of the light is provided by the flash which, by the looks of it, is mounted on top of the camera. Given that, you would have done much better by getting your shutter speed somewhere into the 1/30 - 1/60 range so that you'd be able to pick some background and not have it featureless black. The flash would take care of the action freezing.

Also there is horrible noise all over the dark grays -- I am guessing you lightened up the image considerably in Photoshop and that brought out the noise. But you overdid it -- your highlights are burned out and your blacks are not black enough.

Composition-wise, since this is a jumble I'd compose it even tighter -- get rid of the black areas on the top and left, cut the grass at the bottom...

Fey

Hey OldTimer,
I would agree with much of what Fey already said. Too much flash lighting up the scxene here as opposed to just filling in . Composition is too busy. Too many players caught in frame. Also, it helps alot if we can see the eyes of at least one player. I think using less or no flash and increasing the iso to get you to about 1/125 might look better. Keep trying this and experiment with settings. Seems to me it is a great challenge to shoot action shots at night like this.

Thanks to all who commented. I knew this photo had issues that is the reason that I posted at this forum. I have tried every conceviable combination at this field and have failed with all of them. Early in the season when I could shot with a little ambient light from nature I got some very nice photographs. As the season wore on and lost all late evening light it got more and more difficult. Trying to salvage some frames with PS seems to be a disaster too. Thanks for the help.