I decided to shoot some high school football while taking my daughter to the game. While I have shot a lot of sports, it has been a long time since I shot a Friday night high school football game. I think the last time I did it was with a film camera back in 1991 in Fort Worth, Texas, with my good friend Morris Abernathy.

First, I must say that shooting at ISO 12800 with these Nikon D4 cameras is fantastic. I know I never shot color high school football until now. WOW! I am shocked at the quality we now get out of these cameras.

Here are a few selects from the evening.

By the way, I want you to know I did a custom white balance at the beginning of the game, and then once the sun went down, I did another custom white balance using the ExpoDisc. Slight cropping, and that is it in all these photos.

My tips are pretty simple. First, use a long glass and stay in front of the play. I prefer to shoot from the end zones, so I get a clean background for the most part.

My lens of choice is Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8, and I use it most often with the 1.4 converters. However, since I shoot these on my Nikon D4, I also crop in by 2x, making the lens into an 840mm ƒ/4 lens on the longest part of the zoom.

I prefer to see the players’ faces, and they tend to look towards the end zone if they are offensive, and the defense looks toward the other end zone.

These photos are just a few of the #3 from Milton scoring right in front of me. With that zoom, I could keep him tight throughout the run to score the last frame above him.