You've got 2 challenging conditions going on. Taking sports pictures is pretty challenging. Night photography (or, low-light photography) is pretty challenging. So when you combine the two (night-time sports photography), you can imagine how hard that can be.
Probably the reason why your sons are "streaky" in your photos is because your camera is selecting a very slow shutter speed. Your camera selects a slow shutter speed because it sees a low-light environment. A slow shutter speed lets more light into the camera, giving you a proper exposure (ie. a picture that's not too dark and not too bright).
However, for sports photography, you want just the opposite of that...you want a FAST shutter speed. A fast shutter speed freezes the action so that you don't get blurring or "streaking" from motion. However, fast shutter speeds may sometimes mean darker pictures, since it lets less light into the camera.
So how do you take photos of night-time sports? As with ALL photos, we go back to the 3 components of the exposure triangle:
shutter speed,
aperture, and
ISO. As you probably already learned in your beginning photography class, the proper exposure of
every single photo depends on these 3 components.
- Shutter speed - as already mentioned above, you'll need a FAST shutter speed for sports photography. I'd probably go with 1/500 sec at the very minimum. Ideally, I'd try 1/1000 sec or faster.
- Aperture - aperture is the size of the opening in the lens of the camera. The larger the aperture, the more light comes into the camera. The smaller the aperture, the less light enters the camera. As you might suspect, in a low-light situation, we want as much light to enter the camera as possible. So in low-light situations, we want large apertures.
Aperture settings are a little confusing. A large aperture is represented by a small f-number (such as f/2.8)! Conversely, a small aperture is represented by a large f-number (such as f/16).
In low-light sports photography, ideally, you'll want an aperture that's f/2.8 or larger (f-number of 2.8 or smaller). In this case, a larger aperture allows you to use faster shutter speeds.
I'm not sure what lens you're using. Not all lenses can get to a large aperture of f/2.8. For example, if you had the Canon 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 lens, then your largest aperture is f/4.0 when you're not zoomed in. It's f/5.6 when you're zoomed in all the way. These are not quite ideal apertures for nighttime sports photography.
What's the difference between f/2.8 and f/4.0? f/2.8 lets in TWICE the amount of light into the camera as f/4.0.
How about compared to f/5.6? f/2.8 lets in FOUR TIMES as much light into the camera as f/5.6.
- ISO - ISO sets the sensitivity of the camera's sensor to light. A low ISO (like ISO 100) gives low sensitivity to light, which is great in bright daytime settings. A high ISO (like ISO 800, 1600, 3200, etc) makes the sensor highly sensitive to light, which is best for low-light situations.
Unfortunately, high ISO photos can suffer from "noise" or "graininess", which are tiny random specs that appear throughout the photo. There are computer programs that can remove much of the noise in high ISO photos.
For nighttime sports photography, you'll want to go with a minimum ISO of 800, or perhaps ISO 1600. In this case, a higher ISO allows you to use faster shutter speeds.
So,
for night-time sports photography, you'll need (1) fast shutter speeds, (2) large apertures (small f-numbers), and (3) high ISOs.
These are the 3 components of the "exposure triangle." These 3 components are all interrelated. You can see how changing one component allows you to change the other 2, and vice versa.
If you had all the money in the world, you buy the
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. This lens gives you the larger aperture you'll need (f/2.8) AND allows you to zoom in on the action. You can find this lens for $2300 (
link). This is one of the workhorse lens that professionals (and rich parents) use for nighttime sports photography.
A slightly more economical option would be the
Canon 100mm f/2.0 lens. This is a "prime lens", meaning that it doesn't zoom. Your view through this lens (ie. your focal length) will always be 100mm. This might be good if you find yourself a little farther away from the action. The maximum aperture of f/2.0 lets LOTS of light into your camera. In fact, f/2.0 lets in TWICE as much light enter the camera as f/2.8 (which, in turn, lets you use faster shutter speeds). This lens runs about $474. (
link)
Hope that all made sense. Nighttime sports photography is very, very tough. However, it's not impossible. Hope that helps.
