topic Re: Shooting night time soccer next week with canon rebel t7 in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

Shooting night time soccer next week with canon rebel t7

Lkcphotos31 — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 03:27:44 GMT

So I am shooting a few night time soccer matches next week with my canon rebel t7 I've shot many sporting events during the day but shooting at night in poor light conditions might be a problem for my camera and I. I am aware that the rebel t7 is on the lower end of the canon camera bodies but I will be upgrading soon but for now I am asking for your help on what settings to use. I have taken photos on this field in the past and they turned out fairly dark with a lot of noise. I was shooting 3200 iso and /500 shutter speed and my aperture was at 5.6. Next time I will shoot on a lower aperture but does anyone have any other tips for night time sports photography?

Re: Shooting night time soccer next week with canon rebel t7

Waddizzle — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 05:40:00 GMT

What lens are you using? It would really help to see a sample photo. It would also be good to see what your shutter speed might be in the sample photos.

Re: Shooting night time soccer next week with canon rebel t7

Tintype_18 — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 14:32:24 GMT

Lens, shutter speed, ISO, Setting as AV, TV; I like to experiment by taking lots of photos at the beginning of the event which for me is baseball. One can tell what is best plus having a sackful of photos gives you a choice of what to keep. Have you downloaded the T7 manual? I have it on my laptop and refer to it quite frequently.

Re: Shooting night time soccer next week with canon rebel t7

Lkcphotos31 — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 02:49:15 GMT

I will be using a 100-400 ef f/4. I am aware that the aperture is not ideal but thats the best I have for this event.

Re: Shooting night time soccer next week with canon rebel t7

rs-eos — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 13:05:22 GMT

You may very well be at the limits of your equipment. The best you can do is to set the aperature to f/4. Don't close down at all. Then, per how you want to freeze or show motion, set your shutter speed. The last variable is then ISO. So the faster you'll be setting your shutter speed, the higher your ISO will need to go.

Moving forward, this is where a newer camera would be a huge benefit. Especially if going full-frame. However, on the latter point, do examine your images to see how often you're using focal lengths of 100mm, around 200mm and around 400mm. If you find you're mostly at 100 to 200, then you can use the lens on a full-frame camera with longer focal lengths to compensate for the wider field-of-views you'd be getting. But if you're mostly taking photos in the 300 to 400mm range, moving to full-frame may not be ideal (you'd need to crop photos to get the more narrow field-of-views; losing resolution).

A newer camera body will give you much better ISO performance. The exposures would still be the same (i.e. you'll still be finding the need to be at ISO 1600 or higher). However, the amount of noise in an ISO 3200 image will be much lower than the amount of noise in your T7 at ISO 3200. Could be around 3 stops worth (i.e. an ISO 3200 image on the new camera could be as if you took it at ISO 400 with the T7).

Beyond a camera body, would be a new lens. But price here will dramatically accelerate especially if wanting faster than f/4 for long focal lengths. e.g. an RF 400mm f/2.8L IS lens is around $12,000

Re: Shooting night time soccer next week with canon rebel t7

Lkcphotos31 — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 15:43:59 GMT

Thank you so much for your help! I am thinking about upgrading to a R7 body and I don’t think it is a full frame camera but I’ve heard very good things about it for sports photography.

Re: Shooting night time soccer next week with canon rebel t7

BurnUnit — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 16:25:16 GMT

What's the intended use of the photos you're taking? If they will just be viewed online or on a monitor, or as smaller prints, you can get away with a little more. If you're hoping to sell larger prints like 8x10 then things can get a little trickier.

Having good consistent lighting on the field will be a big help as well. If possible, spend some time experimenting on site under night-time lighting conditions. And depending on the type(s) of lighting you'll probably want to keep an eye on your white balance.

Are you shooting in RAW or jpeg or both? Having RAW files will make it much easier to deal with noise and W/B issues.

As mentioned, post a couple sample pics here so we can see exactly what we're dealing with.