Photographing Soccer at Night
I started photographing soccer a couple of years ago, when my son started playing competitively.
This year was my first year as a teams official photographer, and I have really enjoyed doing it. Firstly you have to love it. The body can no longer play soccer so I get enjoyment out of watching others, at least I can't get injured! I would love to still play, but way too old for such a sport now.
Photographing soccer games in the daylight is pretty straight forward, no big secrets there, fast shutter, low ISO and away you go. However most of the teams games were at night and this is where it gets tricky. Yes having good gear helps and there is a great lens out that I have my eye on, but not in the budget. I shoot with a Canon 1DX and a 70-200mm f2.8 L series lens and sometimes throw on the 2x extender.
Generally when you take photos at night, your shutter speed is slow and you use a tripod or you use a flash. When shooting high speed subjects, flashes are out and so are slow shutter speeds. You need at least 1/200th second to freeze the action, though depends what exactly you are trying to capture. I see people all the time trying to capture their kids from the sidelines with a flash, its not going to reach them, its just going to possibly make the area in front of them even brighter and them darker. And yes you are going to have to set the camera on the Manual function, not Auto.
Where you are shooting makes a big difference. Locally I have found some places better than others, for example, Borzi Park in Mareeba the lighting is poor for action photography but also uneven in comparison to Endevour Park where the lighting is slightly better but still uneven, even the naked eye can see patches of light and dark areas on the field. Barlow Park however is the pick of these and can use my extender here but that shuts it down to f5.6. The lighting here is even and brighter.
Endevour Park - uneven lighting see the patches of light and dark on the field.
Same at Borzi here
Nice even lighting at Barlow
Ideally you want f2.8 with a shutter speed of around 1/400th second and lowest ISO you can get. I don't go any higher than 5000 ISO and thats high only because my camera is great with noise, though you'll find most cameras get very noisy at 2000.
Hate noise!
Focus is very important. I use a monopod as it all gets very heavy, but turn off the image stabiliser and turn on AI servo for focus tracking and constantly track the subject I am trying to capture. This can be tricky during a soccer game but if you position yourself at either end of the field, up behind and to the side of the goalie, then you can do this easier than being perpendicular to the line of focus (just be prepared to hear a bit of swearing, quite a lot of swearing actually).
I like to photograph players when they jump in the air to head a ball and this is a great place to start as they generally are slower moving and you can get a sharply focused shot. Nothing worse than a great shot that is just out of focus. I throw these away.
During a game you have to try and predict where the goalie is about to kick to so you can get ready to zoom in on that area ready for the header, simply watch where the goalie looks to just before he takes the kick, though this doesn't always go to plan.
Most people like shots of players kicking the ball, I like action shots of them tackling the ball coming into a body slam with another player so you can capture great facial expressions as well as some of the weird positions that they can get into, be prepared for more swearing here too.
Its also cool to get other shots other than pure action, like the team jumping on each other after scoring, the referee holding up a red card, the coach shouting out from the sidelines etc. For these shots you can lower your shutter speed and ISO.
Well better get back to work so I can afford that new lens.....
The guys congratulating Cameron after a goal.
I started photographing soccer a couple of years ago, when my son started playing competitively.
This year was my first year as a teams official photographer, and I have really enjoyed doing it. Firstly you have to love it. The body can no longer play soccer so I get enjoyment out of watching others, at least I can't get injured! I would love to still play, but way too old for such a sport now.
Photographing soccer games in the daylight is pretty straight forward, no big secrets there, fast shutter, low ISO and away you go. However most of the teams games were at night and this is where it gets tricky. Yes having good gear helps and there is a great lens out that I have my eye on, but not in the budget. I shoot with a Canon 1DX and a 70-200mm f2.8 L series lens and sometimes throw on the 2x extender.
Generally when you take photos at night, your shutter speed is slow and you use a tripod or you use a flash. When shooting high speed subjects, flashes are out and so are slow shutter speeds. You need at least 1/200th second to freeze the action, though depends what exactly you are trying to capture. I see people all the time trying to capture their kids from the sidelines with a flash, its not going to reach them, its just going to possibly make the area in front of them even brighter and them darker. And yes you are going to have to set the camera on the Manual function, not Auto.
Where you are shooting makes a big difference. Locally I have found some places better than others, for example, Borzi Park in Mareeba the lighting is poor for action photography but also uneven in comparison to Endevour Park where the lighting is slightly better but still uneven, even the naked eye can see patches of light and dark areas on the field. Barlow Park however is the pick of these and can use my extender here but that shuts it down to f5.6. The lighting here is even and brighter.
Endevour Park - uneven lighting see the patches of light and dark on the field.
Nice even lighting at Barlow
Ideally you want f2.8 with a shutter speed of around 1/400th second and lowest ISO you can get. I don't go any higher than 5000 ISO and thats high only because my camera is great with noise, though you'll find most cameras get very noisy at 2000.
Hate noise!
Focus is very important. I use a monopod as it all gets very heavy, but turn off the image stabiliser and turn on AI servo for focus tracking and constantly track the subject I am trying to capture. This can be tricky during a soccer game but if you position yourself at either end of the field, up behind and to the side of the goalie, then you can do this easier than being perpendicular to the line of focus (just be prepared to hear a bit of swearing, quite a lot of swearing actually).
I like to photograph players when they jump in the air to head a ball and this is a great place to start as they generally are slower moving and you can get a sharply focused shot. Nothing worse than a great shot that is just out of focus. I throw these away.
During a game you have to try and predict where the goalie is about to kick to so you can get ready to zoom in on that area ready for the header, simply watch where the goalie looks to just before he takes the kick, though this doesn't always go to plan.
Most people like shots of players kicking the ball, I like action shots of them tackling the ball coming into a body slam with another player so you can capture great facial expressions as well as some of the weird positions that they can get into, be prepared for more swearing here too.
Its also cool to get other shots other than pure action, like the team jumping on each other after scoring, the referee holding up a red card, the coach shouting out from the sidelines etc. For these shots you can lower your shutter speed and ISO.
Well better get back to work so I can afford that new lens.....
The guys congratulating Cameron after a goal.
The goalie would not let Simon have the ball after scoring...
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