Wrestling school help low light situations.

[DanielC84]

What settings should i be using for fast past environments and very low light I wanna get the whole subject in focus? I'mm using a Canon 70D 100-400. Some photos of my local wrestling school putting on a show.

 

[cgw]

Spot metering, single point AF pattern. Pull up shadows in post, keep highlights tame and un-clipped.

 

[ac12]

Everything depends on the lighting.
Without knowing that, we can't tell you what to do.
What exposure and camera settings are you using now? That will at least give us a starting point.

What you want and what you can do are two different things.
LOW light sports photography depends very much on having the right gear.

In LOW light, FAST glass wins.
Ditch the 100-400/4.5-5.6, and get closer with a FASTER lens. A 70-200/2.8 or a faster prime.

Your 70D maxes out at ISO 12800.
IMHO, that is not high enough for LOW light photography.
You probably need a camera with a higher max ISO of 25600, or higher.

A camera with a higher max ISO can only make up so much for a slow lens.
At some point, you may/will need BOTH, a high max ISO AND a FAST lens.

The body in profile (as you pic) is deeper than a body head-on.
You need more Depth of Field (DoF) for a body in profile.
A shorter lens at the same aperture will give you more DoF.
There are DoF calculators that you can use to see this.

 

[DanielC84]

Everything depends on the lighting.
Without knowing that, we can't tell you what to do.
What exposure and camera settings are you using now? That will at least give us a starting point.

What you want and what you can do are two different things.
LOW light sports photography depends very much on having the right gear.

In LOW light, FAST glass wins.
Ditch the 100-400/4.5-5.6, and get closer with a FASTER lens. A 70-200/2.8 or a faster prime.

Your 70D maxes out at ISO 12800.
IMHO, that is not high enough for LOW light photography.
You probably need a camera with a higher max ISO of 25600, or higher.

A camera with a higher max ISO can only make up so much for a slow lens.
At some point, you may/will need BOTH, a high max ISO AND a FAST lens.

The body in profile (as you pic) is deeper than a body head-on.
You need more Depth of Field (DoF) for a body in profile.
A shorter lens at the same aperture will give you more DoF.
There are DoF calculators that you can use to see this.

I also use a 7D Mark II

 

[ac12]

I also use a 7D Mark II

The 7D mk2 has a native max ISO of 16000, not much better than the 12800 of the 70D.
You can use boosted high ISO up to 51200, but I have no idea of the IQ loss when you use boost.

 

[DanielC84]

The 7D mk2 has a native max ISO of 16000, not much better than the 12800 of the 70D.
You can use boosted high ISO up to 51200, but I have no idea of the IQ loss when you use boost.

pardon my stupidity, but what is boost iso?

 

[ac12]

Read the instruction manual for your 7D mk2.
The native ISO goes up to 16,000.
You can use the "boost" function to raise the max ISO to 51,200.

Problems:
1) I have no idea how boost works on the Canon, nor how to set it, and
2) I do not know what the IQ trade-off is to do that.

 

[smoke665]

In addition to the advice already given, how do you plan on using the final image? Your sample in the OP doesn't look bad displayed on my tablet, but if you blow it up to an 11x14 print it would likely be different. My avatar is a crop from an image of laser light show projected on the side of a mountain from a good 400yds away. I had to go up to ISO 25600 to get an acceptable exposure. While its okay as a small image, it would be unacceptable if it were blown up.