Express Action Sports

If i go to the Dodgers Stadium at a night game with a Canon T2i body and a Sigma 50-200mm f/4.0-5.6 lens, would i be able to get good pictures under the bad stadium lights.
What would be the best settings for taking a picture of the player standing around?

What would be the best settings for a player in action?

Thanks. If you have a flickr with pictures of your sports photography, leave the link and ill check them out if you’d like.

Under stadium lights at night your going to have a lot of trouble taking action shots.

With that f-number you are really constricted to daylight action shots. It is still possible none the less, but the ISO is going to be so high your going to see a lot of noise in the images.

Best settings is setting the aperture as low as possible and then boost the ISO till you get at least 1/250 of a shutter speed but around 1/1000 would be ideal.

I recommend you stick to daytime action shots though.

I want to take action pictures of field hockey (outdoor) players. I tried a Canon SLR (forgot the model #), didn’t go wide enough. Any pointers to reading materials, or camera makes/models recommendations?
thx

You will need a fast-shooting camera body coupled with fast lenses.

If you’re going Canon, the fastest prosumer dSLR is the Canon 40D. It gives you 10MP quality and shoots at 6.5 fps (frames per second), which should be sufficient for your shooting needs. It retails for about $1000 on Amazon.

As for a good lens for sports shooting, I’d highly recommend the EF 70-200mm f/4L. It’s fast, it has a good zoom range, lightweight, and incredibly sharp. Its large aperture (low f-number) allows more light in and blurs the background to draw more sharpness to the player(s). Best of all, it only costs $450 on Amazon!

You mentioned wide; I guess you want to capture a large spread of players then? If so, and you’re using the 40D, I’d recommend the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. It’s also fast, sharp, goes very wide, and has good build quality. It retails on Amazon for $400! I recently bought mine for landscape and photojournalism work, and I’ve loved using it.

Good luck!

Should you use the "sports mode" for all action shots?
Is a 75 – 300mm lens sufficient for shooting action shots?

I do a lot of high school basketball sports photography, and I can say that the less your camera has to think about, the better it does. Since you don’t provide a whole lot of information, I’ll answer as generally as I can.

First consideration: how close to the action can you be? I’m allowed to be right behind the baseline in the gym, so I can get away with a 50mm prime lens. If I had to be in the stands, I would need a longer focal length.

Second consideration: how is the lighting? Inside a gymnasium, the lighting is pretty constant from one side to the next. That means you can put your camera on "manual mode", set one exposure for all your pictures and get great exposure all the time. Gymnasiums do happen to have some of the worst quality of light, so you’ll have to experiment with color balance to get something that works for most pictures. If you are lucky, the lighting will be relatively good. Outdoors and the lighting isn’t always so consistent–particularly if it is a night game.

Third consideration: how much motion blur can you handle? The higher the shutter speed the less motion blur. If you can’t go fully manual, you might consider "Tv mode" (Time Value) mode to have the same shutter speed, but let the camera choose the right aperture. Letting the camera choose both the shutter speed and the aperture in "sports mode" will probably give you fewer results you’ll want to keep.

As always, there are certain compromises you’ll have to make. When you have to compromise, always favor the faster shutter speed. Depending on the lighting where your event is, you will probably need a lens with a wide aperture (the lower the f/ number the wider the aperture). If your 75-300mm lens shoots f/2.8 and has image shake control it can be a pretty nice lens. If you are right next to the action, it might actually be too long of a lens. A 50mm f/1.4 prime costs about $350 (it’s a standard price point regardless of the system you shoot), and an 85mm f/1.8 prime is about the same. Both are excellent choices depending on how close you are to the action.

What you don’t want: flash. If you are far from the action, or shooting football where the field is very large, even the most powerful flash won’t always reach the players. It’s also distracting to the players, which can cause injuries.