Soccer at ISO1600

Ok, so today I managed to make it out to my little sister's soccer game which started at 7PM. The sun was pretty much setting at the time, but the stadium lights seemed to be somewhat adequate.

I just wanted to fiddle around and with my Canon XSi and EF 70-200mm f2.8L IS I thought I would try and see how well I could capture parts of their game.

I switched to Av (keeping aperture at f2.8 ) and ISO1600. I can't go higher than that with ISO and I didn't have a flash with me. Then again, how far would my Sigma DG Super 530 flash go? Think it said it would only work up to 107mm.

#1

They look decently exposed but the shutter speed was not high enough to stop the action. What I usually do in this sort of situation is go to manual mode, go to widest aperture, highest necessary shutter-speed, and corresponding ISO. Shoot in RAW so you can boost exposure even more if you HAVE to. You'll have more play than you would with JPGs.

You are basically shooting in the worst possible situation, so you can't expect great results.

Never shot night time soccer, but I would think a flash *could* be helpful in this particular situation.

Best advice - find a better time to shoot When left with no other options, do what you gotta do to stop the action.

Good effort.

Next time I go out I'll try it.

I was at ISO1600 (highest my camera goes), f2.8 aperture with IS on. I even tried exposure compensation to get a shutter speed or two faster. if they were right in front of me I could get 1/300, but if they were on the other side of the field I would only get 1/80th.

Perhaps next time I'll bring along my flash and see how that goes. Glad to know i was pretty much at my gear's limits.

Look in the owners manual for the expanded ISO range and use "H".
The lights flicker and there are dark areas on the field so exposures will vary. When I shoot night soccer I find a bright spot on the field and wait for the action to move in to that area. Some of the white shirts appear blown out so you might have been able to up the shutter a bit more on these. The background will be very dark, almost black so don't use an evaluative or average metering mode. I spot meter on the grass and make minor adjustments from there in manual.
Leave the flash at home unless you want to learn something completely different. If that's the case, search here for the flashed or strobed football threads. Same concept, different sport.

Perhaps it's more applicable to football as you can get closer to your subjects, but I see you have a 50 1.8... that can, on a 1.6x sensor, give you a little room to work with if all else fails. I tried out the 50 last year for giggles and was mildly impressed due to shutter speeds.

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