Highschool Football

[Old Timer]

More Friday night lights.....

[Photo-John]

Looking good! I like number four the best, although it looks like he's falling asleep

What ISO are you using and what kind of shutter speed are you able to get? It looks like you're walking that fine line between sharpness and motion blur. For the most part the photos are sharp but I can see a little movement in the ball and feet in some photos. I need to shoot some night team sports someday so I can find out how hard it really is.

[Old Timer]

When I have some daylight I shoot in aperture priority with an f2.8 setting keeping my ISO as low as possible and inching it upward as I loss existing light, keeping a minimum of 1/500th shutter speed. When I am shooting under total artificial light I go to manual at f2.8 ant 1/500th. My ISO is usually 3200 to 4000 with the D700. I don't mind a little motion but try to freeze action as much as possible that's not always possible with a passed ball of fast moving feet.

[Photo-John]

Man, ISO 3200 or 4000 just seems nuts to me! But you have to do what you have to do to get the job done. Shooting at f/2.8 also seems sketchy to me. I like to have a little focus padding. But then my subjects are usually moving a lot faster than yours. Are you using any noise reduction on these?

[Old Timer]

No noise reduction John. Yes I know what you mean about the 3200 to 4000 ISO but I just don't hesitate with the D700 I jack it up and let it rip. With the D2h if I got over 400 ISO it was Neat Image city. I had to use all kinds of tricks to get usable images. So many high school fields have very poor light so you just have to adjust to the circumstances Friday night to Friday night. I've been lucky the last couple of weeks and worked at schools with decent light.

[JETA]

I'm glad I checked in here OT. Nice work. I'm really liking the 4th shot!

[JETA]

I'm with you OT. I think some motion is a-ok. I remember when I first started I couldn't get a shutter speed higher than 250. Some of the fields are beasts and we all know what the end zones are like. Caves.

I'm finding myself at 8000 to 10,000 iso for most fields.

[pleincadre]

daylight is really good
night could be better

[fotofill]

I wonder how long Nikon waited to produce those shoot-in-the-dark chips? I came from the D2X world before going to D700. It's great pushing up to 4 or 5K on some of the HS fields. I have notice the cycling of the color of the lights. I was told that as the bulbs age, this color cycling occurs. On a finger-down multiple frame shot, I saw 4 different color tints on one ball carrier.
Photoshop and Noise Ninja are good friends for the night shooters!