Shooting football at night

Recently I shot a football game from dusk to dark with the lights on. I have another one coming up tomorrow. Overall I was happy, but would like to make it a bit sharper. Curious if any of you have shot a game like this or have a recommendations on camera settings. Was pretty touch dealing with the bright lights, green field, red jersey's and a ton of action.

Shooting Canon 1D Mark 4 with 75-200 L Series lens.

http://digital-photography-school.co...ht-photography

I've had the same problem shooting softball at that time of the day. Even worse trying to shoot thru the backstop fence.

I have a similar lens but not an L series. Basically, I stopped trying for the action shots and shot just before or after the action and tried to get the tension then. It didn't put as much demand on the shutter speed.

Shoot manual mode. Push iso to get ss 1/500 min and 1/1000 if possible. Obviously shoot wide open. I find auto iso very helpful if lighting changing much but for stadium would just shoot manual. You have good equipment so sharpness comes from fastest ss you can obtain. I routinely shoot 2000 iso with mark4 and 3200 when needed, beyond that I find noise too objectionable, looking forward to the "x"

JB:

Manual mode, auto ISO 100-3200, AIServo.

Customs functions: C.fn III-2 set to slow, C.fn III-3 set to 3: release / tracking priority. C.fn III-4 set to 1 continuous AF track priority. C.fn III-8 single point expansion with 1 maybe 2 so you get some expansion off your single AF point but don't go with all of the AF points. I would start using the center AF point it's way more sensitive then the rest.

If the 70-200 is hunting switch on the focus distance limiter on the lens, if it still hunts set C.fn III-5 to 1 and see if that helps. You might need to prefocus the lens though if you set that.

If you're shooting jpegs check your noise reduction settings, that might be messing with the sharpness at higher ISO.

Send me some pics from your shoot so I can see what you got going on.

RD