Intentional underexposure?

[SenorNikonMan]

This past weekend I shot a high school and a college football game. Both were night games and the lighting was not what I would've liked it to be at either game. I was shooting wide open at f/2.8 at 1,600 ISO and I still could not get the minimum 1/250th second shutter speed I like to shoot football at.

I know that I can't do anything after the fact about the blur I was getting by shooting slower than 1/250th second but I can do something about an underexposed photo so I was wondering if I could've intentionally underexposed by one or two stops and then corrected the exposure later on my computer. Would this have worked?

[SenorNikonMan]

Here are some shots I got at the Texas State game Saturday night. These were taken during warm-ups when there was still plenty of sunlight.

[SenorNikonMan]

Three of the shots I got during the actual game.

[Homer]

The key to good night shots is getting the exposure right the first time. By underexposing the shot you'll have to brighten the pictures in post processing and this will bring out a lot of noise. I think you'd do better if you just push your ISO to 3200 to up the shutter speed then to underexpose the shot. Either way your going to get noise but I think you'll get more by underexposing and correcting later.

Jim

[livin4lax09]

yes, very true. the best way to avoid noise is to hit the exposure dead on or overexpose by 1/3. +1/3 at ISO 3200 looks better than -2/3 at ISO 1600, no question.