I am using a Canon Rebel XTand am having trouble taking football pictures at night without blur?

Question

I've taken sports photos during the day and had much better results. The football photos at night blur really bad.

Answer 1

Try putting the camera in the 'P' (Program) mode. Then set your ISO at the highest possible setting - 1600 in the case of the XT. At your shooting position, press the shutter release half way down to get the preview of the shot, shown on the bottom of the frame in the viewfinder. Then rotate the little dial next to the shutter release until the preview info shows the highest shutter speed you can get without underexposing. Get as close as you can to the action. Brace yourself and the camera as you take the picture. Finally, all of this may not do the job if your lens is too slow.

Answer 2

Firstly anything related to film obviously isn't going to work because the Rebel XT is a digital camera. Thus, don't think about using push/pull because those are film developing techniques.

Secondly, football at night is very difficult for any lens south of $1000. The problem is fast motion + low light:

-Fast motion, such as football, requires a fast shutter speed. This dictates how long the shutter is actually open for the camera sensor to capture the image and light. The less time it's open, the less movement the sensor captures. Conversely, if the shutter is open for a long time, the sensor captures the all the motion during the longer period, so that's how blurry photos are created.

-Low light: In any situation of low light, the camera will try to adjust in a number of ways. 1. XT might pop the flash up. 2. Shutter will open for longer to allow more time for light to come in. 3. Shutter will open wider to allow more room for light to come in. These are problematic because 1. spectators in football are usually not within range of any flash, even external ones. 2. If the camera tries to open the shutter for a longer period, one gets the blurry picture as described above. 3. The most obvious solution then, is to open the shutter up wider, while keeping it open for a short amount of time to eliminate blur. The problem is that cheaper lenses, including the kit lens that comes with the XT, cannot open up very wide, thus forcing the camera to take other steps, including extending the time the shutter is open. Thus, blurry photos.

Boosting the ISO up as high as possible will help, as the higher the ISO, the greater the light sensitivity. The tradeoff is that the photo becomes much grainier and many people do not like this.

Specific to the XT, one should use shutter-priority mode. On the dial, this is the one labeled Tv, where T stands for Time of the shutter opening. Move the dial to this mode. Then, change the ISO to as high as possible. Next, look through the eyepiece and use the dial so that the shutter speed indicator says 60. the aperture (shutter wideness) will adjust itself to the widest setting possible. now, take photos, adjusting the shutter speed higher and higher. you will notice the photos getting darker and darker, but less blur at each step. the trick is to find the speed that has the best trade-off between blur and light.

this solution is the simplest. one could also consider:
-Using a monopod or tripod to eliminate the slight shake that comes from the photographer holding the camera in one's hands. This is not guaranteed to work, as it obviously cannot eliminate the motion of the players, which leads to:
-Using a "faster" lens. This is misleading, as the lens is not taking the photo any "faster." It really means that the shutter can open wider, so that there's much more space for light to come in, even using a fast shutter speed (which stops the motion on the field.) Good apertures for this kind of application are ones 4.0 and less (2.8, 2, 1.8, 1.4) But lenses with this kind of aperture range are typically expensive. If you are using the 18-55 kit lens, remember that the lowest aperture at 18mm (the widest setting) is 3.5, whereas at 55mm (the most telephoto), it is 5.6. Thus, if you can physically get closer to the action and use the lens at 18mm and f/3.5, this may help a little bit. I realize this usually isn't realistic because of where the spectators sit. Buying a lens that simply has more telephoto (50mm, 100mm, whatever) but will a relatively high aperture opening of 4 or 5.6 will not change anything.

My last piece of advice is about composition. Find a place on the field that is especially well lit and try to take photos of that area.

Answer 3

You are going to have to use a faster shutter speed and perhaps a smaller aperture. The best way to do that is to go to a higher ISO on your film. I have taken good photographs using 400 ISO at night, but that depends on the color temperature of the lighting at night. In most cases a flash will do no good because the players are too far away from you for the flash to have any affect.

If you are shooting 200 film, go to 400, if you are using 400, go to 800, but you have to remember that the higher the ISO, the grain will pick up in the picture, especially the more you enlarge it.

Push/Pull.

Pushing a film means tht you are shooting with 400 film, but you turn your camera onto 800, then take the film to a pro developer, not the corner drug store, where they can develop it differently, pushing it to the 800 speed.

Pulling means just the opposite, if you pictures are too bright, but you have tons of ISO 400, shoot them at 200 and ask the pro developer to pull it to 200.

You also have to move with the running player, you can't stand still and take the picture, follow him with your camera and that will assist in stopping the blur with the person you are photographing.

The other option is to get a new flash with a higher guide number which will give your flash more power to jump out and touch someone.

A standard camera flash, like eitehr comes on the camera, or is in the manual as the one to use with it, generally will have a range from 15 to 20 feet. You will have to talk to the camera store about the best one to use and if your camera is auto focus and you don't have to touch the flash to get normal pictures, you might have to buy and adapter for your camera to keep that up.

I would set it one manual, focus it myself, and set the flash manually.

Answer 4

You probably need a "faster" lens (larger maximum aperture) and faster film, perhaps ISO 800. The ISO film and lens you're using causes the shutter to open and close at a slower speed, which causes the images to come out blurred. You need a much faster shutter speed (but in order to get this you must have more light to enable the shutter to open and close faster... so, a larger aperture and faster, more light sensitive film is required).

Answer 5

Well, it appears the answer has been given. 800iso with a wide open aperature is the way to do it. If you go any higher, you will produce a lot of digital noise and that can be a pain to take care of at that high.

I've shot at night before with 800 iso and an aperature of like 2.6 and have had great results that way.

Answer 6

if the pics are coming out fine exposure wise, keep yourself there, just get a tripod. If you dont want to use one an shoot off hand, open the aperture and speed up the shutter alittle bit. getting alittle more senstive film may help to if your going to use a faster shutter. Play around with some settings, and actually, for doing off hand shooting, i pratice by rifle shooting. it helps keeping my hand steady...try using a shooting stance when taking pics to. Triangle between the head(eyepeice) and two arms. feet sholder width apart and exhale before releasing the shutter. Helps alot.

Answer 7

Now you must understand that it is not the camera but the lens. Yes, get closer to your subject, use lowest ISO, widest fStop. But you do not mention your lens. Perhaps the widest is 4.5?

Answer 8

All the previous answers are good and you can also try using a "faster" lens, that is a lens with the lowest minimum fstop.

Answer 9

put in 800 speed film and shorten shutter speed one step