Nighttime Sports Photography

[misscarrieb]

I am a newbie and would appreciate some advice.

I have a T3i and I'm trying to take photos at a little league baseball game at nighttime. There are some overhead lights, but it's still fairly dark. I do have to use quite a bit of zoom since I'm not super close to the action. I've just been using the auto setting, but I'm finding that the photos are too dark to really see and they are blurred. I've also tried using the nighttime auto setting, but those photos turn out even worse. What settings should I use if I wanted to try shooting in manual?

Thanks for the advice!

[TCampbell]

Unfortunately my experience in night photography has taught me that this doesn't really work all that well.  When I shoot night events (e.g. concerts, etc.) I find that the overwhelming amount of "black" in the scene beats the brightness of my intended subject.  

I only get a correct exposure if I select spot metering and target my intended subject to meter them (and then use the metering-lock feature before I recompose and shoot) -- OR -- I can leave it on evaluative metering but dial in some exposure compensation.  Usually I have to dial back at least 1 full stop and sometimes as much as 2 stops to avoid getting blown highlights in my intended subjects.  

Evaluative metering by itself has not been very successful in these somewhat extreme shooting situations.  I don't blame the camera for this because the situations are far from typical.  But as the camera will let me change metering modes and/or use exposure compensation, it's equipped to let me compensate and I do get the results I want when I use those features.

[TTMartin]

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@TCampbell wrote:

Unfortunately my experience in night photography has taught me that this doesn't really work all that well.  When I shoot night events (e.g. concerts, etc.) I find that the overwhelming amount of "black" in the scene beats the brightness of my intended subject.  

I only get a correct exposure if I select spot metering and target my intended subject to meter them (and then use the metering-lock feature before I recompose and shoot) -- OR -- I can leave it on evaluative metering but dial in some exposure compensation.  Usually I have to dial back at least 1 full stop and sometimes as much as 2 stops to avoid getting blown highlights in my intended subjects.  

Evaluative metering by itself has not been very successful in these somewhat extreme shooting situations.  I don't blame the camera for this because the situations are far from typical.  But as the camera will let me change metering modes and/or use exposure compensation, it's equipped to let me compensate and I do get the results I want when I use those features.

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I'm not going to get in to an arguement over this.  My suggestion is for the original poster to try both metering modes and see which works best for him.

[ebiggs1]

"My suggestion is for the original poster to try both metering modes and see which works best ..."

It is always best to "bracket" or try different exposures and/or technique.  So this is my advice, too.  However, Tim Campbell is correct, I suspect spot will work better.  So it would be my first choice, also.

I didn't know it was an argument?