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Rebel T5-settings for football games!

muhammadblibla
Apprentice

Hi there! I love taking pictures and have gotten overall great shots with not much knowledge on camera settings, I get slightly overwhelmed with all the different settings and have a tough time remembering so do trial and error most of the time.

Anyway, I am shooting football now-night games and I am on the field so my 75-300 is fine as far as zoom. I am just struggling with the right settings. I understand the blur since my lens is definitely not a preferred one for action photography like this....but this past weekend most of my photos came out with a yellow cast. I'm not sure the settings as I did keep trying different things and in a fast moving game I lost track of what I was doing 😕

I know how frustrating this is to all of you highly knowledgeable folks....but if there is any way to simply give me settings to try that have worked for any of you with this camera/lens combo...I would greatly appreciate it!

8 REPLIES 8

Waddizzle
Legend
Legend

Shooting Friday Night Lights on a poorly lit high school football field is a tough task, one which even top-of-the-line DSLRs are pushed to their limits.  Professionals use f/2.8, wide aperture lenses to shoot night sports.  Some use lenses with even wider apertures.

 

Your biggest hurdle is the 75-300mm kit lens.  If you wish to shoot night time sports, then you need a much faster lens.

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"The right mouse button is your friend."

jrhoffman75
Legend
Legend

The yellow cast may be due to the lighting. The camera's auto white balance may not be correcting properly; do you know what kind of lighting they are using?

 

As a start switch the camera to the running man sport setting. You will see that the camera favors a higher shutter speed, higher ISO and a wider aperture. 

You can then set your camera to Manual M mode. Set aperture wide open, set shutter speed to 1/1000 and adjust ISO to get proper exposure. Shoot RAW and you can adjust white balance in your software to eliminate the yellow cast. 

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

wq9nsc
Authority
Authority

I shoot a lot of high school football (or at least did prior to the pandemic) and lighting is always an issue. 

 

1.  Although it takes more card space, shoot in RAW if possible because this will allow you to salvage some images that would otherwise be useless. 

 

2.  The yellow cast sounds like a white balance issue due to stadium lighting; this is easily corrected in RAW but if you must shoot in JPG then you will need to set the proper white balance in the camera before shooting.  White florescent light is often a decent white balance compromise for a lot of field lighting if you need a fast setting for JPG but it won't be optimal.

 

3.  For sports I always put the camera in manual mode with ISO set to auto.  Set your aperture to the widest available setting, and then set the shutter speed to as fast as possible without causing the ISO to rise to a level with too much noise.  I like staying at 1/800 minimum for HS football but with your lens and camera this may not be possible so drop the shutter speed as needed and accept that some of your best shots may be when the QB is frozen, of the line prior to the snap, sidelines reactions, etc.  I use two camera bodies (1DX III and 1DX II) with a 400 or 300 f2.8 on the 1DX III and a 70-200 f2.8 on the 1DX II and even with these very capable bodies and glass lighting is still an issue in many stadiums particularly on darker parts of the field. 

 

Night sports at a typical high school facility are still a challenge for photo technology.  The photo below was shot at one of the better lit fields in the area with a 1DX II and EF 300 f2.8 lens and it still forced a lower shutter speed (1/640) and ISO (8,000) combination than optimal.  Some fields are worse forcing the ISO up in to the 20,000+ range to keep good shutter speed with a f2.8 lens and at times I have used my EF 200 f2 lens at some fields.

 

Rodger

 

AQ9I7659.JPG

EOS 1DX M3, 1DX M2, 1DX, 5DS R, M6 Mark II, 1D M2, EOS 650 (film), many lenses, XF400 video

ebiggs1
Legend
Legend

I don't know how much of Rodger's advice will help you since you are using a T5 and the 75-300mm zoom. It is going to be difficult to impossible to get shots like he does. Your T5 has a top ISO of 6400 I believe, so 3200 is probably the highest ISO you can use and expect decent results. However, what you get is up to you to determine if it is good or not, not us.

 

I always advise Av mode in this situation. Your lens is way too slow for this type work so the aperture is your problem. Av mode will let you select the widest aperture available with the camera selecting the fastest SS it can. Use One shot. Do not try other focus settings and use just the center focus point. Set the ISO to 3200 but make sure it is OK.  It might be too grainy. Your decision but you may have to lower it to 1600.  Shoot Raw format so the WB will not be an issue since you can set it in post.  If you do not have the free from Canon DPP4 d/l it today.

 

All this is guess work without seeing the actual football field and its lighting. Some fairly good and some are really crappy. Ours is a good one since they overhauled it several years ago. Plastic grass and new stadium lights.  You probably could get good results there.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

ebiggs1
Legend
Legend

Oh, one other thing, at 300mm you are basically using an almost a 500mm lens. That means you need rock solid technique to get good results. Even when you are shooting under good lighting.  Shooting under poor lights will just increase the need to be rock solid. SS needs to be over 1/500, and faster is better.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

Listen to Ernie about the effective focal length of the 300 on a "crop" body because depending upon your placement it will make framing far more difficult.  On a very well illuminated field, I love the 300 f2.8 on my full frame bodies (equivalent to you setting your zoom at 188mm) because I can crop when needed and it is much easier to handle than the 400 2.8 (NOT so much the weight as keeping things properly framed during fast action).  But when lighting is poor, then keeping the frame filled via the 400 lens is a big help and with your T5 that 400 is equivalent to a 250mm focal length.  I am shooting from the sidelines and the end zones so it is different if you are farther away but I well remember the steep learning curve the first time I used a 400 instead of 300 glass. 

 

My first 1 series was the 8.2 megapixel 1D Mark 2 with a top ISO of 3200 which was so noisy it wasn't really usable and 1600 was pretty ugly but shooting in RAW and making the best use of noise reduction made it reasonable.  But I would strongly advise you to do now what I did with that camera and that is to at times choose a slower shutter speed (aperture still wide open) and try to capture some shots when the action naturally freezes.  I am not familiar with your lens but I don't believe it is an IS type so a monopod will be of  great value.  If you time it right, on a passing play you will often be able to capture a great shot of the QB looking downfield while virtually frozen.  Or capture the center or some of the D line in that moment before the snap because the expressions often tell a great story.  With the camera and lens setup you have now, there is no way to capture great fast action shots under typical field lighting so you have to be alert for those opportunities when players in place tell the story.  The leaping celebration after a score can be captured at a somewhat slower shutter speed and you may be able to get a nice photo of that but a repeating shot that you certainly can get with your gear is the moment the player is coming to the sidelines after a big play and the head coach is there to greet him grinning from ear to ear.  That makes a wonderful shot and fast shutter speed isn't needed. 

 

Or to summarize, get some great sharp shots of player emotion because one of those is far better than a thousand blurred grainy images and if you put your effort and your own mental focus into getting the shots that you can instead of ones that really aren't possible then your number of "keepers" is going to go way up.  If you have field access, also get some shots of player warm up because often at this point in the season there is a fair amount of natural light still available.

 

One final thought is to practice and try some panning shots because if you time it properly then you can sharply freeze the player's face but it isn't an easy shot.  Below is an image I captured last month of my daughter practicing sprints, it was shot at 1/60, f6.3, ISO 100 with a 1DX III and EF 200 f2 lens.  Her face is pretty sharp via panning while everything else is motion blurred.  Panning with some motion blur isn't my favorite shot but it is one of the "tricks" you can use to pull out some shots when you are limited by gear and light at night such as when a returner or back breaks free and makes a run down the field. but you have to be ready to drop that shutter speed the moment such a play becomes apparent and this is why I would shoot in manual mode with the aperture wide open, ISO floating (maybe constrain it in the menu if there is too much noise at the highest setting), and dump the shutter speed to a lower value quickly as the player is moving your direction.  Of course practice this before the game because it has to be a natural reaction on your part just like the athletes becuase if you have to stop to think about it the opportunity will pass before you can act.  Ernie's advice to use a single focus point is spot on and this also makes panning easier because you use that as a reference point on the player and start tracking before depressing the shutter release all the way AND continue tracking even after you release the shutter.  With a little practice these shots become MUCH easier.

 

Rodger

 

AS0I0176.JPG

EOS 1DX M3, 1DX M2, 1DX, 5DS R, M6 Mark II, 1D M2, EOS 650 (film), many lenses, XF400 video

Oh, man, love that shot Rodger!  Smiley Happy

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

Thanks Ernie!  It helps to have a cooperative model 🙂

 

Rodger

EOS 1DX M3, 1DX M2, 1DX, 5DS R, M6 Mark II, 1D M2, EOS 650 (film), many lenses, XF400 video
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