I’ve had a good number of requests asking about specific night photography techniques, and although I cover Photographing Scenes at Night and Handheld Photographs at Night, neither of those cover capturing intense, quick motion.

It’s difficult enough during broad daylight to capture fast-paced sports action, but oh my, come nightfall the problems are compounded. The two biggest problems sports photographers face at night are lack of light and non-standard white balance. The second of these is rather easy to remedy on the spot or, to a certain extent, in post production (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc). The issue of stopping action at night, however, is something that software can’t really fix, it must be dealt with while you’re out there shooting.

To capture outdoor sports moments at night, including football, soccer, baseball, etc… you’ll need a good dose of both equipment and technique. Let’s take you through the list…

The Lens

• Fast – For telephotos, fast usually means f2.8. If you’re shooting at 5.6, your getting 2-stops less worth of light making it to your sensor. That means your shutter speed must be twice as long!
• Telephoto – If you want to get close to the action, you’ll want 200mm or better on your lens. Most consumer and pro-sumer DSLR cameras help out here because of the 1.5x Crop Factor (read more about crop factor here). With a Nikon D300 for example, a 200mm lens gives you the equivalent zooming power of a 300mm lens. Nice!
• Image Stabilization / Vibration Reduction – This falls into the “nice to have” category. If you don’t have it, you can still get some great shots, if you do, it’ll boost your ability to get cleaner images. Remember though, that anti shake type technologies only help stop your own camera movement, they don’t help stop action. Again. VR and IS will not make blurry action shots any clearer. As you’ll read below, a monopod can sometimes help more than IS/VR features… Plus, it’s a whole heck of a lot cheaper!

The Accessories

• Monopod – This one is definitely helpful at night. A good sturdy monopod attached to your camera body (good) or lens (better) will help steady your shots at night by keeping the shake and vertical movement to a minimum.

The Camera

• High ISO – A fancy acronym for what is basically “sensitivity to light”, (read a primer on ISO here). A camera with the ability to shoot low-noise, high-ISO images helps a lot here. In some cases, you can make up for a slower lens with a super high-ISO, but you don’t want to rely on that because higher ISO can also mean a dirtier image. Do some test shots at ISO 1600, 3200, 6400, or whatever your highest settings are, and see which results are acceptable to you. For sports at night, you’ll usually want to peg that ISO as high as is reasonable.
• Manual Exposure – If you have the ability and the game is after sunset, set your exposure manually. The lighting conditions on the field are going to be very consistent all night in most stadiums. This takes less processing time/power from shot to shot and gives you consistency, which makes the editing process much easier.
• Put the Flash Away – For heaven’s sake, don’t use your flash. Keep it with you in case you have an up-close opportunity, but mostly you’ll want the flash off. Remember that the action is mostly going to be too far away for the flash to have any effect. What’s worse, shooting in auto mode with a flash will lead to grossly underexposed shots. If you do encounter a player close up in play, you’ll probably blind them and be taken out as they miss their mark and sail into you instead.

The Technique

• Follow the action – That is, keep an eye on things as you shoot and move your lens with the players and ball. When you get the hang of this technique, you’ll notice players becoming more crisp and backgrounds becoming more (motion) blurred. This is especially important when you’re working with equipment that forces you to use a slower shutter speed.
• Smooth and Steady Motion – Easier said than done, right? It’s important to practice your motions, ALL of them. Even a smooth movement when tracking the action can be nullified by that itchy, overbearing trigger finger. Practice being smooth in everything you do and your pictures will look as good as you

White Balance

• Custom Settings – Stadium lighting can be in a spectrum that your camera does not have a good pre-set white balance for. If it is already nighttime when you’re setting up, try to get a custom white balance reading right off the bat using a white background (a white card helps, but you can use any white object that’s handy). If your camera does not allow a custom white balance, try to toggle between settings until you find one that gives neutral looking whites and stick with it for the whole game.

Well, good luck and happy shooting!

-PL

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