Who says you need flash at night?!

[sierramister]

Took a bunch at the high school football game last night. Had a pretty intensive lightning delay (err, where is that tripod?!). Very poorly lit stadium, set the ISO to 6400, f/2.8, and 1/400-1/500.
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NO flash! Taken with D7000 and 70-200 from the sideline (no monopod).

 

[Robin Usagani]

Even if you did have flash, your flash wont really do much if you are at 200mm

 

[sierramister]

Tell that to this guy: PhotoJournalism: Behold "The Beast"

 

[dakkon76]

"The Beast" haha nice. I could see this being very obtrusive... no to mention that the best action shots aren't typically the first shot once you hit the shutter...

 

[imagemaker46]

With the quality and capabilities of todays high end cameras shooting outdoors with big strobes are really pointless. The guys I know that used to strobe indoor swim meets have stopped doing it, even with poor pool lights shooting at 1600-3200 looks fine.

 

[brian_f2.8]

They look a little soft around the edges. With out being there and not knowing the lighting conditions hard to tell. Most high schools have very poor lighting. The goal for the athletic dept is to give enough light to play, who cares about the photographers point of view. One local high school just re-did their lighting and night shots looks great there, only problem is that you need a press pass to get on the side lines. I have seen the D7000 with those same settings so Im blaming the lighting on this one, good job.

 

[pdq5oh]

Many H S stadiums have somewhat adequate lighting. With your D7000 iso 6400 shouldn't be a problem. One thing about the lights I've found is the color temp changes at times. Our eyes don't catch it, but the camera will. I shoot auto white balance. Then in ViewNX 2 I change it to high color rendering fluorescent and lower the temp to 3925. You may need to move a little magenta or green from there. But very little. + or - 1 or 2 max. This is all done in RAW. Here's a pic from a recent game to show what I'm talking about. Iso 6400, 1/400 @ 2.8.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

Nice! My D7000 with Nikon 70-200 rocks with low ambient light/no flash too.

 

[pdq5oh]

2Wheel, I'm very happy with the same setup. From what I've seen you're putting out some real nice stuff.

 

[brian_f2.8]

i would assume that you could go even higher at 6400 iso and a f2.8. 1/400th is kinda slow no??? id have to be there to really get a good look at the lighting. i have never shot with the d7000 so i can't speak from experience on that particular camera. however, i have used a d3s and that is where i am getting my information from.

 

[tevo]

Whoa.. how did you process these?

 

[pdq5oh]

brian_f2.8, not on this field. I've shot some where I can get more shutter speed, as much as 1/1000. But this particular field loses about a stop inside the 20. Around mid field I can get 1/500-1/640. I also want enough exposure to properly show faces in the helmets.
tevo, if you're asking me, I process as I stated in the post with the pic. I shoot all games in RAW so I can fix the white balance variations. I've seen as much as three temps in one sequence of a play. Then tweak as necessary to get what I want. This pic is a converted jpeg, btw.