Tet68survivor wrote:
Money is money! Before you buy a new lens, learn your camera settings well! Two things are going to happen, you may realize you don't need a new lens and, you will know exactly what you need to spend the money on! Before "just buying a lens", try one of the several great lens rental companies and try several lenses! Not expensive that way, and most of them will put the rental money or a good portion if it toward the new lens purchase!
He's going to need a new lens if he wants to shoot night time high school football.
I have a Nikon D5 and have a Sigma Sport 150-600 and a Nikon 80-200 f2.8. The Sigma Sport is at least as fast as his lens and I can't use it at night in the high school stadium I regularly work in.
To shoot with the 80-200 I am at f2.8 1/1000 and ISO 10,000. I know that some high school stadiums are brighter than that, but others are at least that dark and maybe worse.
That camera can't do that. That means that he will have to shoot at a slower shutter speed and a lower ISO, which means that anything moving fast will blur. It's not if it will blur, it's how much it will blur.
I would love to shoot from the back of the end zone as teams near the goal line, but the end zones are black holes. The correct exposure in the corners of the end zone are f2.8 1/250th at ISO 12,800. That has too much blur and too much noise to be useable.
From the original posters description he is shooting with his lens wide open and is at least close to the highest ISO that he can use. The only thing that I don't know is whether or not his camera will even work with either the 80-200 or the 70-200 because I don't know whether his body has the focusing motor that the high end Nikons has. If not, then there isn't really much that he can do.
What I can guarantee is that f6.3 will not work in most high school stadiums.
In case this is unclear this is what I do for a living. Before I had the D5 I had to shoot with a D300 and a D300s. The highest ISO I could use was 1,600 before the noise got too bad. That means I shot at 250th of a second and underexposed. Worked more or less ok for black and white photos. Could not publish a color football photo until I purchased a camera that had higher ISO capabilities.
That's just the way it is. Learning to use your camera better isn't going to stop the basic problem, which is that it is dark outside, and footballs can move at a fairly high rate of speed, as do football players on occasion.