Best Settings for Night Sports Shooting?

Any tips would be great on shooting high action with little light.

I am using a 1d Mark ii w/ a 70-200mm L F4

every time I have shot at night it dosent work out well so figured I would see advice from the experts!

The 70-200 f/4 is too slow for shooting sports at nights. You would need something faster. At least get the 70-200 f/2.8.

I'm certainly no expert, but if you can't use flash, the lighting is poor, and you have fast moving subjects, the only thing you can really do is shoot wide open and crank up the ISO. And, of course, you need to keep the shutter speed fast enough to freeze (or at least slow to an acceptable level) the action. Without flash, the best answer is faster glass(but then you are also fighting a shallower DOF).

That (referring to the 70-200 f/2.8 here) doesn't help. One stop larger aperture implies that you can keep going a few more minutes at dusk, but that's it.

If there's no illumination to talk about you have to add it. Ridiculous ISO may also help. If you look here, you can see an image before 10-mila started last year. Continue, and you find some cometition shots as well, taken with flash. Nothing else worked.

The EF 85 mm f/1.8 USM is an interesting alternative when the light is low. Significantly faster than any zoom, in the shorter end of a 70-200 and fast AF makes it a good sports lens, when it's dark. If you need something longer, then there's the EF 135 mm f/2L USM. No IS, but if the target is moving it doesn't matter much.

BaseballPhotography44 wrote in post #10549891
Any tips would be great on shooting high action with little light.

The fastest lens and highest ISO you can get.

From night and dimly-lit indoor events, with a T2i and a Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 lens:

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Baseball means no flash so I would agree 85mm f1.8 or 135mm f2 unless you can get 200mm f1.8 or the newer 200mm f2 IS. Even then you will be at the higest ISOs.

BaseballPhotography44 wrote in post #10549891
Any tips would be great on shooting high action with little light.

I am using a 1d Mark ii w/ a 70-200mm L F4

every time I have shot at night it dosent work out well so figured I would see advice from the experts!

Use Iso 12800 all the time

BaseballPhotography44 wrote in post #10549891
Any tips would be great on shooting high action with little light.

I am using a 1d Mark ii w/ a 70-200mm L F4

every time I have shot at night it dosent work out well so figured I would see advice from the experts!

Just keep cranking that ISO and until you get your shutter speed fast enough to stop action.

Worth poiting out, baseball at night can be shot for journalistic purposes but you will never capture pretty images of the athletes at night no matter what gear and settings you use. The combination of lights above the field with baseball caps mean you will have ugly shadows that obscure the eyes of the players in every shot.