Shooting Tennis at Night without blur

[truetifoso]

I have a question about shooting sports at night. Specifically, I take pictures of my son playing tennis at night. The court seems very bright, and the pictures I get reflect that (read: the photos are not dark). Because it's a private tennis court, I have the advantage of shooting from just about anywhere I want.

My problem is any sort of motion (e.g. swinging racket, ball movement) results in a complete blur. I can't freeze the action the way that I can during the day.

I use Sony SLT A-77 with a 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Telephoto Lens. I just bought the camera, and I know there is a lot of debate over the merits of it, but if anyone has any advice that doesn't have to do with getting another camera I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[gsgary]

You may be lucky if you set your iso at iso6400 aperture priority 70mm F4.5 do not zoom or your or it will go to F5.6 if you still get blur your iso will have to go higher if that does not work you will have to get a fast lens

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

I have a question about shooting sports at night. Specifically, I take pictures of my son playing tennis at night. The court seems very bright, and the pictures I get reflect that (read: the photos are not dark). Because it's a private tennis court, I have the advantage of shooting from just about anywhere I want.

My problem is any sort of motion (e.g. swinging racket, ball movement) results in a complete blur. I can't freeze the action the way that I can during the day.

I use Sony SLT A-77 with a 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Telephoto Lens. I just bought the camera, and I know there is a lot of debate over the merits of it, but if anyone has any advice that doesn't have to do with getting another camera I would greatly appreciate it.

It sounds like the light is pretty good for a night shot. The problem is your shutter speed. You need to jack up your shutter speed if there is motion blur. Shoot at 1/1000 and compensate elsewhere in your exposure paramaters. Shooting at an extremely fast shutter speed will freeze the action for you. You'll need to compensate with higher ISO (very common for sports photography) and a wider aperture. Your lense isn't particularly fast, and usually you don't want to shoot wide open if you can help it, (lenses are sharper stopped down). Lots of cameras have a flash sync limit of 1/250 and that probably is not fast enough for what you're doing.

 

[SCraig]

Bottom line: If you don't want motion blur you've GOT to get the shutter speed up or pan with the movement. With a lot of ambient light nothing else is going to do it.

 

[gsgary]

I have a question about shooting sports at night. Specifically, I take pictures of my son playing tennis at night. The court seems very bright, and the pictures I get reflect that (read: the photos are not dark). Because it's a private tennis court, I have the advantage of shooting from just about anywhere I want.

My problem is any sort of motion (e.g. swinging racket, ball movement) results in a complete blur. I can't freeze the action the way that I can during the day.

I use Sony SLT A-77 with a 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Telephoto Lens. I just bought the camera, and I know there is a lot of debate over the merits of it, but if anyone has any advice that doesn't have to do with getting another camera I would greatly appreciate it.

It sounds like the light is pretty good for a night shot. The problem is your shutter speed. You need to jack up your shutter speed if there is motion blur. Shoot at 1/1000 and compensate elsewhere in your exposure paramaters. Shooting at an extremely fast shutter speed will freeze the action for you. You'll need to compensate with higher ISO (very common for sports photography) and a wider aperture. Your lense isn't particularly fast, and usually you don't want to shoot wide open if you can help it, (lenses are sharper stopped down). Lots of cameras have a flash sync limit of 1/250 and that probably is not fast enough for what you're doing.

He has no chance of getting 1/1000 with that lens

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

He has no chance of getting 1/1000 with that lens

Depends on the light. He needs to provide more information about the light. From what he's said, sounds doable.

 

[Derrel]

With that gear, I would say shoot in RAW capture mode, at ISO 6,400, and keep the lens at the shorter end of the range where the aperture is at its largest...The OP shooting thusly MIGHT be lucky to eke out 1/320 second, guess-stimated...if the camera will not go as high as ISO 6,400, and instead tops out at ISO 3,200, then underexpose one stop when shooting, and make up for it in post processing.

 

[truetifoso]

The lights are pretty bright. Is it fair to say that my lens is my achilles heel? If so, do you have any recommendations under $2,000? Also, most of my sports pictures aren't in focus. In most cases the background is clear while my son is blurred. Is this also a function of the lens?Thanks so much for your advice.

 

[Kolia]

Autofocus isn't always perfect and might have a hard time figuring out what it is you're shooting. What AF settings are you using ? Have you tried to focus manually ?

You might want to consider renting a 70-200mm f2.8 lens to see if you like and if it helps before spending 2,000$

 

[Dao]

If the lights were bright, you will not have issue with the blur. The issue was not enough light. Night time sports maybe around EV 8 or EV 9. So with f/5.6, shutter speed will be around 1/8 or 1/15 with ISO100.

So if you need to close to 1/1000 shutter speed, you may need to have 6 to 7 stops. And that is ISO 6400 to 12800. If the telephoto lens is able to open to f/2.8, that is 2 stops from f/5.6. So ISO can drop to 1600 to 3200.


Of course, if 1/500 is fast enough, then you can use ISO 3200 to ISO 6400.


Also, background clear subject blur issue, was the subject was in motion?

 

[o hey tyler]

He has no chance of getting 1/1000 with that lens

Depends on the light. He needs to provide more information about the light. From what he's said, sounds doable.

People who are just getting into photography often aren't capable of "reading" light. What seems reasonably bright to them (especially at night) is still not very bright for a camera/lens combo with a maximum aperture of f/4 at the wide end.

I'm willing to bet that it would be very difficult to maintain a shutter speed high enough to freeze motion unless the ISO was set insanely high.

 

[truetifoso]

I love my camera, but at high ISO levels, the pictures get really grainy. I found this out when I took pictures of a couple of my son's basketball games.

 

[gsgary]

I love my camera, but at high ISO levels, the pictures get really grainy. I found this out when I took pictures of a couple of my son's basketball games.

There is a person on here that reckons it's the worlds best camera at auto focus and shooting in low light

 

[shmne]

Depending on what you mean by "complete blur" I think motion blurr is very fitting for high action sports. Are you using a monopod, or a loosely tightened tripod to help you stabalize your lens? This could drastically help increase performance.

 

[theregoesjb]

Here is a night time, high ISO, tip i read a while ago:

I dont know how you want the shots to look but I saw some great sports photography night shots a couple months ago and the guy said his trick was cranking up the ISO to get the shot he wanted (maybe even slightly over exposing of your actual subject) and then pulling back the exposure in post.
This allowed his subject to come out fairly well exposed and then by pulling back the exposure in post it washed away any noise the high ISO caused in the background and the background came out just looking dark. His particular shots were of a football game. Wish i had the actual link.

Good luck