Have you ever been in a situation where you are shooting a sporting event with variable lighting when daylight is fading as well?  Shooting Manual can be tough when the athletes are going from sun to shade.  Typically in those situations, I have usually shot Aperture preferred. The problem comes in when, because of a setting sun, the high ISOs required to get a quick shutter speed (SS) in shadow result in noisy images for all the shots.  The question then becomes: How can I ensure that all my images are recorded at the lowest ISO possible regardless of whether they are in sun or shadow.  The answer is Auto ISO.

Simply set  your camera to Manual and specify your desired aperture and shutter speed.  Set you ISO to Auto.  The camera will meter and expose your images with your settings as choose the appropriate ISO as needed.  For football, you can even set exposure compensation.  How EC is set is dependent upon the camera body but more and more bodies have this feature.

1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400

1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2000

1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600

1/1000sec. f/2.8 ISO 500

In each case the SS was 1/1000 sec and the aperture was f/2.8.  Auto ISO was used (with EC of + 1/3) to get the lowest ISO possible compatible with my desired SS.

Phil Zivnuska