Shooting sports and the evening can be a compromise between needed s fast shutter to stop action or a longer shutter to allow enough light for a good exposure. Fortunately, you've got a "fast" lens. My suggestions are:
Shoot in "A" mode (aperture priority) and change the aperture of the lens to the lowest number available to make the aperture open to maximum, and increase the ISO to 400 or 800. You may even get satisfactory results at ISO1600, but you should check the results on a computer screen before blindly going out shooting at the level.
By increasing the aperture, two things happen; exposure times are reduced to minimum so that motion is stopped (or blur minimized) and the the depth of field becomes very narrow or "shallow". Depth of field or "DOF" describes the distance in front and beyond the point of focus that will also be in focus. Large apertures (low "f" number s like 1.4 to 2.8 ) = narrow DOF and small apertures (high "f" numbers like 16 to 22 and beyond) = wide DOF. An example would be if you took a picture of someone's face from a2 feet away at f 1.4 and focused on the tip of the nose - the eyes would begin to get soft or out of focus - the ears would be even more noticeable - and that background would very blurred. The same picture at f 22 nearly everything would be in focus - except for maybe the background - depending how far behind it is from the subject's head. Check the example below:
Look at the backgrounds of the pictures above. The left is largely in focus at f 8 while the right is blurry at f 2.5. Had left been shot at f 22 or more, more of the background would be in focus.
Increasing the ISO to 400 or 800 increases the camera's sensitivity to light like film. The higher the ISO, the less time it takes to get a properly exposed picture. High ISO are helpful in low light situations or other times you need to have a faster shutter speed (for sports or don't have a tripod for pictures that need long exposures). Assume you want to take a picture of something that the camera tells you won't be exposed correctly unless you shoot at say for example f 2.8 and shutter is 1/30 second. If the camera ISO was set to 100, you could change it to 200. This doubles the sensitivity to light - meaning you need 1/2 the light; you can change the f number from f 2.8 to f 4, OR, leave it at 2.8 and increase the shutter speed to the next faster value 1/60 sec. If you change the ISO to 400, it is now 4x's sensitive than 100 (or 2x's than 200). At ISO 400, you could go two f stops smaller to f 5.6 or stay at 2.8 and increase shutter from 1/30 to 1/125. For ISO 800, you could go three f stops smaller to f 8 or stay at 2.8 and increase shutter from 1/30 to 1/250. You can mix and match, too. Go one up on the speed and two smaller on the aperture. The drawback to higher ISOs is that the pictures become grainier with each increase. Eventually, the pictures don't look good when you get into ISO numbers above 800 (or less on some DSLR cameras - and even less on point and shoot types). You have to experiment to find where your preferences are. See below for Low and High ISO comparison shots:
The left picture above has nice, smooth transitions between shades of colors - the right picture has a grainy appearance called "noise". Some is acceptable but others are not - it depends what YOU can live with. Sometimes it's better to have a grainy shot than nothing at all.
Lastly, you can shoot "S" for shutter mode, to control motion instead of "A" which controls volume of light instead. The same principles apply.
I hope this helps & good luck!
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