What settings do you use to photograph hockey players in action?
I have a Nikon D70 digital DSL camera and can't get good stop-action pictures due to the poor lighting and added glare from the white ice. My lense is a 70mm to 300mm with an fstop of 4.0.
If this is what you do for a living, get a lens better suited for what you shoot.
I believe a good polarizer filter would get rid of the glare from the white ice.
Your shutter speed needs to be very fast, unless you decide to pan (which could also work put panning takes work to get down)
It sounds like your only option besides flash is to turn up your iso sensitivity or put your iso sensitivity on auto.
A faster lens (f2.8) which is expensive or change your ISO while shooting at f4. Even with a faster lens, you most likely will still need higher ISO. The drawback of using high ISO values is you will introduce more noise into the shot. Some Nikon cameras support auto ISO as a menu choice. It lets the camera select the proper ISO for the aperture and shutter speed. You don't want to use "P" (program) mode to take shots in this type of situation. I would set the camera for f4 and a fast enough shutter speed and let the camera select the ISO.
To freeze action, you should have a shutter speed around 1/500
Like the person above me said, use a relativley high ISO (800 maybe?) and a quick shutter speed (1/640 or 1/800) use a pretty open aperature (fstop around 5.6 or something) because of the quick shutter speed.
I hear your pain. I recently went through the same problem. I'm an accomplished amateur who is accustomed to getting good pics. Just wasn't happening with my son's ice hockey.
After much trial and error as well as research, here is what I found out: Don't be frustrated, ice hockey is very difficult to photograph. You will need at least an f2.8 lens or larger aperture (2.4, 2.2, 2/\.0… ) to get good shots. To make matters worse, your Nikon is not very good at high ISO. After 800 ISO, your pictures will have a lot of color noise. There are programs you can buy to remove the noise (Noise Ninja, Noiseware… ).
Get close enough to get a (you will need a 85mm or longer. Set the camera in aperture priority and set the lowest aperture - a 1.8 is ideal but will cost some money. Use only center focus point. Set your ISO to 800. When you are taking shots, observe your shutter speed. It needs to be 1/500th or better for action shots. If the shutter speed is slower than 1/500, increase your ISO to 1600. Depending on the lighting, f1.8 should get you 1/500 or faster. Stop done the lowest f stop until your shutter speed is no slower than 1/500. This will give you an metering on what lens you need. Remember, f stop, shutter speed and ISO make up the exposure. Shutter speed needs to be around 1/500, so the other two (f stop and ISO) need to be set to give you an acceptable shot. Again, at a 4.0 fstop you will have a real bit of difficulty getting a crystal clear shot.
The perfect lens for getting it all would be the new 70-200VR 2.8 (1600 new). I have this one on my wish list for the holidays. Let's see if Santa takes the hint.