A Poorly Lit Athletic Field

Alfred University met Union College in an NCAA Division III men's soccer match last evening. Union College's soccer field has to be one of the poorer lit pitches, college or high school, I've shot at.

With lighting only on the corners of the field, the darkest portion of the pitch is in the midfield. I positioned myself in a corner of the field in order to take advantage of the best lighting but still had to use ISO 4000 at f/2.8 and 1/750th of a second and still was underexposing a bit on most shots. Between the high ISO and having to increase exposure a bit in post processing, the images are noisier than I am usually comfortable with.

While I used my EOS 7D and 70-200mm f/2.8L USM for reach and frames per second, if I were to shoot at this field at night again I'd consider using my EOS 5D Mark III and concentrate on action closer to my location. ISO 6400 on the full frame 5D Mark III should have noise characteristics similar to ISO 3200 on the 7D.

Here are some examples. Obviously, images reduced in size will not show the noise as obviously as when looking at the files at 100%.