EOS Rebel SL3 sports photos come out really dark

[msclout72]

Hello!  I am hoping someone can help me with setting for sports photography--swimming, basketball, soccer, etc....I have set it on TV, Iso 400-500 as someone suggested, but everything is really dark.  Even when I adjust the iso to 200 everything is really dark.  Thoughts? Help?  Thanks!

[shadowsports]

Greetings,

Tv is shutter priority.  This tells the camera how long to allow image data to be read by the sensor.  This is duration.

What shutter speed are you shooting with?  

Are you familiar with the Exposure Triangle?

Shutter speed, Aperture, ISO and the role each plays in exposure?  

Help us to better understand the challenges you are facing.  Please post some example images. These will be RAW files with EXIF data.  

You will need to use a file sharing service such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc and share a  link here for us to evaluate your images.  

[msclout72]

This is all very new to me as this is my first DSLR fresh out of the box.  I don't want to be discouraged--I just want to be able to take photos as a hobby and capture my kids' sporting events.  Any suggestions, tips, ideas, links would be so appreciated as I haven't been able to find much by googling.  Thank you!

[wq9nsc]

Adjusting ISO to lower numbers will result in darker photos and unless you have a really bright venue, there is no way you will be capturing sports at such a low ISO except in full sun.  Attached photo is in a reasonably well illuminated gym using an EF 70-200 f2.8 wide open @ 1/800 and the correct exposure pushes the ISO to 4,000.  Swimming is similar to basketball lighting and this photo was at ISO 3,200 with a f2.8 lens.  Soccer in the daytime is less demanding of equipment but after the sun sets shooting night soccer is like U.S. rules football at night, attached soccer photo was maybe an hour after sunset and ISO 10,000 was needed.

What lens are you using with your camera?  Having a wide aperture lens is critical for sports; f2.8 is desirable, f4 is workable, anything less is going to force you into excessively slow shutter speed and excessively high ISO.

For sports, I set the exposure mode to manual with the aperture wide open and the shutter speed fast enough to avoid most motion blur (1/800 will work for most basketball, 1/1,000 is really needed for football, soccer, lacrosse, etc.) and set the ISO to auto to let it complete the exposure triangle.

IF you are using a lens that has a fairly narrow (higher number) best aperture, then you will have to slow your shutter speed to try to make things work but you will be getting into motion blur.  For sports, you need a lens with enough reach (focal length) to fill preferably 70% of the sensor area with the desired final crop and a wide enough aperture that will allow fast shutter speed and a decent ISO.

RodgerISO 4000ISO 3200ISO 10,000

[msclout72]

Thanks for that feedback.   While I have been a lover of photography, this is my first DSLR camera so I am trying to figure this all out and the user manual was not helpful.  I currently just have the lens the camera came with EF-S 18-55 mm IS STM lens.  I take pictures as a hobby and to capture my kids' events.  Sounds like I need to invest in a better lense in order to capture better action shots.  I was hoping the lense it came with would be forgiving enough for me to get used to all the settings before purchasing another lense.  I am all about step by step for setting for actions shots---any sites or links that help would be appreciated.  Also, any thoughts on a lense (again I am not a professional) would be appreciated.  Thank you for your time!

[deebatman316]

Do you have a budget to spend on a lens. Take my colleague’s Rodger’s (wq9sc) advice he’s a sports photographer. A fast aperture telephoto lens doesn’t come cheap either. He already suggested one in his post above the Canon EF 70-200mm F/2.8L IS USM lens lineup.