H.S. football at night

[Blue Deuce]

Since my wife is the principal I have been coerced into taking pictures of some of the games which are played at night. I know the 70-200 if I owned it would be a better choice then my 100-400 for this "assignment" but can I still expect to get some decent shots with the ambient light of a high school stadium ?

[MazerRakhm]

That all depends on youf view of "decent". I shot all last year with my 75-300mm which wasn't the fastest lens in the world but all I had at the time. (I'm thinking your (100-400L IS should perform better than my old lens.) My stop actions will be a bit blurry if the action was moving real fast, I found myself staying right around 1/250 or so for a base. If you have a flash and it's allowed I'd use it, but even with that lens I still had a couple of good shots and quite a few decent ones last year.

Oh, none of them were across the field though, I still took pictures when they were across from me, but not very many, it got pretty dark on the other side.

[SurfKahakai]

I'll be giving it a try with my 100-400L as well. My girlfriend's little brothers are the Captain and Quarterback so I've got to get some decent shots.

[pcasciola]

Forget it. Unless the lighting is absolutely amazing like a pro stadium, and you can shoot ISO 3200, you will be lucky to get 1/125 at f/5.6. f/2.8 or faster is the way to go. The 100-400L is a fine lens, and it can do a decent job with sports shooting in daylight, but it's not a night sports lens.

[cecilc]

Forget it. Unless the lighting is absolutely amazing like a pro stadium, and you can shoot ISO 3200, you will be lucky to get 1/125 at f/5.6. f/2.8 or faster is the way to go. The 100-400L is a fine lens, and it can do a decent job with sports shooting in daylight, but it's not a night sports lens.

The man's right ...
I have the 100-400 and it's a great lens. I use it all the time - in daylight ....
But under high school stadium lights (and the only place that's lit worse is the high school gym!), I pull out my Sigma 120-300 2.8. And even then, I'm shooting manual at ISO 1600 at 2.8 at either 1/250 or 1/320 (depending on field position) ....
You will be able to get nice "static" shots of the players with the 100-400 .... but on the field, trying to freeze action with the 100-400 will leave you very disappointed.
The 100-400 is two stops slower than a 2.8 lens - so, even at ISO 3200 you're looking at shutter speeds of only 1/125 - that's just not fast enough to stop action during a football game ....

[pcasciola]

I pull out my Sigma 120-300 2.8That Sigma is arguably the ultimate night sports zoom lens. It still amazes me that Canon doesn't make any zooms faster than f/5-f/5.6 that go above 200mm.

I should have also mentioned that I struggled with night Little League even with the 300/4L IS, and even that is a full stop faster than the 100-400L. Like Cecil said, OK for static shots, but my action shots were useless.

[Blue Deuce]

Thanks for the input. Thats what I figured.

[PhotosGuy]

That all depends on youf view of "decent". Too true! Sometimes it comes down to "Crappy shots or no shots at all"? I had to make that choise a few months ago.
Seen this? (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=75062)

I also did some flash tests before & found that I could get a good exposure at about 130', ISO 800 at f/4.
Run some tests, shoot anyway, learn from it! ;)