Pond Hockey

I took these photos of my kids yesterday. I'm not really happy with how they turned out. Can someone help me out here? What did I do wrong? I use my digital Rebel XT, 1600 ISO, autofocus, and a 75-300mm EF Lens. Any help is very welcomed!!!

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

Now that's the kind of hockey I grew up playing. We didn't need no stinking pads, boards, nets, or RULES! Nice!

As far as the pics go, for both, the WB looks off on my monitor. A bit underexposed too. The second one suffers from motion blur due to a slow shutter. How was the light? At 1600 ISO, you should have been fine with your lens outside, unless it was getting dark. The slower 75-300 will set you back a bit in darker situations. Does the XT have ISO 3200? Maybe try that in similar light next time. Many shoot in manual mode for indoor rinks, but I think that may be difficult to use outside for sports if the sun is in and out of the frame. Try shutter priority, or maybe even aperture priority with the lens set wide open. If you do use a program mode, try center weighted or spot metering rather than the multi mode deal. Also, while outside taking pics of you kids messing around on the ice, using some flash wouldn't really be out of the question. It would have probably helped in this case.

Yea Kiddo, I agree with Focus.

By the looks of the sun in the background were you shooting between 3-5 PM? Or was it early in the morning?

God bless you if you got up really early, oh wait your Canadian, you guys get up that early for Hockey no matter what!

With the camera set to ISO 1600 there should of been plenty of light to capture the moment. But like I say depending on the time of day you didn't have much available light behind you.

Ross

Are you sure you shot at ISO 1600? According to the Exif data you shot both at ISO 400. The first at 1/250 @ f6.3, 110mm , the 2nd at 1/200 @ f7.1, 300mm. Even with that lens you weren't shooting wide open. I'm not sure which one is the Normal program mode that you shot in, but you'd be much better off shooting manual or at least Av and shoot wide open. I've shot in Av using my 28-135 which is also an variable aperature lens, but you have to be careful of tricky lighting conditions such as strong backlighting. Here's the key when doing this at least with the XT(I assume it would be this way with any camera). When you set your camera to Av, make sure you set your zoom to its widest focal length and choose it's fastest aperature. This way as you zoom in, the camera will automatically stop down according the focal length, and when you zoom back out it will automatically open the aperature back up. If you do the opposite and set the aperature will you're at the longest focal length, the camera will never use a faster aperature even when you zoom all the way out.

It's harder to use a variable aperature lens shooting manual as you have to constantly adjust your exposure as you zoom. One thought I had was to just shoot manual and set your f-stop to whatever your lens is at its middle focal length and set your shutter speed based on that. In your case you'd never be more than a 1/2 stop off with the 70-300 which is probably something you could live with. Of course this will only work if you have consistent lighting. If not, then you're back to having to adjust your exposure as the lighting conditions change anyway so picking the middle aperature won't really help unless you want to stick with that and adjust the shutter speed like the camera would be doing in Av mode.

My camera was set at 400 ISO then I changed it to 1600 because of the time of day. It was 4:00pm. NO metalman1010, I wasn't up that early!! LOL!! We're actually a football family!! Tadrscin thanks for your advice. I'll have to play with my camera a little more and figure out what works. I'm use to "poor" lighting, but its a new camera. Alot of what I shoot is in gyms, or a dusk and night with "lights". Lacks_focus I have discovered that the flash I had for my old Rebel which was a 35mm, doesn't work on my digital. So I am looking for a new flash which would help alot. No the Rebel XT doesn't have 3200 ISO, I wish that it did.

Thanks everyone for your comments and advice!! It's nice to have some where to chat about photography!!