Scott Sewell Photography

Canon RF200-800/f6.3-9 Lens under the Friday Night Lights!

I purchased the Canon RF200-800/f6.3-9 lens about a year ago mainly to use for airshows, marching bands and wildlife. But one can't have a lens with this kind of reach without trying it for sports. My first attempt at using this sports was at a night-time high school football game last fall (nothing like diving right into the fire, huh!). Pairing this lens with the R3 body, I set my ISO to auto, set the max ISO to 51200, set the lens to f6.3 at 200mm, set my shutter speed to 1/800 and let 'er rip! I had no commitments for the images and zero expectations. I just wanted to try the lens under the lights.

To my surprise, this lens performed very well and I came away with more than enough usable images. While I was using the 200-800 lens, my son was using the Canon EF200-400/f4 lens, also on an R3 body with the same settings (except the aperture was at f4). I knew that lens would work just fine as I have used it for nighttime sports countless times.

What are my takeaways?

The key is--and I can't emphasize this enough--one can NOT be afraid of shooting at high ISOs. But hey, you're a sports photographer so high ISO is a thing we always deal with, right? Today's bodies like the R3 are simply incredible at how well they handle high ISOs. Every one of these images was shot as a JPEG with in-camera noise reduction only. NO external NR was applied to these images. None.
Another point to make about these excercist is shutter speed. I cringe when someone suggest to "never" go below some random shutter speed they think is best. Of course, one needs fast enough shutter speeds to stop action (assuming that's usually the point), but it's completely possible to shoot below, 1/1000, for example to capture sports action. These images are examples. The key thing to always know, IME, is to understand exposure settings and know how far you might have to adjust to capture the images you need. You may have to lower your shutter speed to 1/640, you may have to crank up your exposure. You'll almost always have to shoot as wide open as possible under the lights. But it's up to YOU to decide what will work best, not someone else's random "NEVER shoot below 1/1000 shutter speed" comment

Below are images from that night with settings below each images. Thoughts? Have you used the 200-800 lens for nighttime sports and how did it work for you?