Soccer at Night

While Robyn was away on her trip with our friend Kathleen down to Oregon (she’ll be writing about it in a bit), I had the opportunity to head out to the valley (mainly Maple Ridge) and do some family visiting. My dad first asked me to come by on the Saturday and photograph his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s son and a friend as they plummeted to the ground at roughly 120MPH. Yes they went skydiving, but I’ll write about that after I go through the photos again.

Back to the main part of this particular post. My little sister, Katie, asked me to come out to her soccer game that night at Town Centre Stadium in Coquitlam and try and photograph them playing. As it wasn’t out of my way and I did have some of my camera gear with me, I thought I would try it out and see how well I could do with what I had. Actually, all I had on me was my Canon XSi with my EF 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens. As Town Centre Stadium is lit fairly well I thought I would try it out anyways and see. I was a bit skeptical as my camera body can only go up to ISO1600, it would probably turn out better at ISO3200 if I had that option.

So on to the photos! Alright, I played around with the settings but for the most part I kept it on Av to set the aperture to 2.8. This game me shutter speeds of about 1/80th to 1/300th depending on where the subject was in relationship to my shooting area. Yes, I was also at ISO1600. The thing about shutter speeds and sports though, you want fast shutter speeds to stop the action. 1/300th I would think isn’t fast enough, typically I like to have at least 1/500th if I am shooting sports.

This is my little sister, at mid-field. The shot didn’t turn out too bad as she wasn’t really moving. The play was stopped of course, I don’t think she would just stand around willy nilly during the game

If you click on any of the photos in this post it will pop up a larger version of them. The photos above were alright captures, but again because the shutter wasn’t fast enough they aren’t perfectly sharp. Still not bad for what I had to work with right?

With the girls closer to me on my side of the field I was able to utilize a faster shutter speed. I believe the IS of my lens helped saved many of my photos as well, or at least helped more of them turn out a bit better.

So what could I do or use to get better night shots of soccer, or any sport? Utilize at higher ISO if my camera would allow for it. A flash might have helped too, but my Sigma EF-530 DG Super specifications say that it will only work up to 107mm. That would be fine for the close action though, but I didn’t bring it with me.

Overall the shots for the night were not the greatest and I would have probably come back with about 10% of somewhat usable shots, perhaps even less. Though to me, it’s usually all about the experience of trying out something new. Finding my gear and skill limits with photography while figuring out ways to overcome and improve. Perhaps next time I’ll head out to one of her games during the day where I am sure I can get better, sharper, action shots!

What do you think? Have you taken nighttime sports photos before? Did they turn out? I’m always looking for critism and advice so don’t hold back, the comments are open!