Last Game of Season. On to Playoffs.

[donaldwthompson]

Our last game of the regular season was Friday. First Playoff game is this week.

[swampler]

#3 looks painful!

What settings did you use? While composition and action looks good, they appear to be both soft and noisy (except for the last one), so I'm assuming you had really, really bad lighting there? Or else you cropped a lot?

Good luck in the playoffs. Our team didn't make it to the playoffs, so I'm done with football for the year unless I get assigned to shoot another team this week.

[Anderson Photography]

The images are soft and some are very noisy. Are you not allowed to use flash in your conference?

[swampler]

Originally Posted by Anderson Photography

The images are soft and some are very noisy. Are you not allowed to use flash in your conference?

At the risk of hijacking the thread...I personally don't like the look of flashed football, i.e. red eyes, bright player with dark background, etc. Do you have a solution that would work without the "flashy" look?

[Anderson Photography]

Originally Posted by swampler

At the risk of hijacking the thread...I personally don't like the look of flashed football, i.e. red eyes, bright player with dark background, etc. Do you have a solution that would work without the "flashy" look?

I have to use it for the team I cover as ambient light in their stadium at ISO 1000 at 2.8 is about 1/40 of a second. Plus, the Mark IIN doesn't produce the best images at higher ISOs.
It may not work elsewhere but where I shoot the majority of my games my settings are ISO 800, aperture priority of 2.8 and I use a Canon 550Ex onboard flash at a manual setting of 1/4 to 1/2 power, depending on what hash mark then team is on.
Some shooters I know like to use a higher ISO so they get a lighter background but I like the way these shots turn out. For shooters that don't like flash I completely respect that but I like to use it and the editor of the paper I shoot for has been happy with them this way.

Also, like mentioned in your post, I apologize for hijacking the thread and posting another image.

[donaldwthompson]

I do not consider it hijacking of this thread as it is all about ideas and such to help me/us improve. As far as I know we are not able to use the flash but I am only doing this as a hobby(ie not selling my pics) Here where the setting for most of these where. They where all taken with my sigma lens.

I shot in raw and used DPP to touch them up and convert to jpg.

Camera Model Canon EOS 50D
Firmware Firmware Version 1.0.7
Shooting Date/Time 10/30/2009 8:14:02 PM
Shooting Mode Shutter-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/500
Av( Aperture Value ) 2.8
Metering Mode Center-Weighted Average Metering
Exposure Compensation +1
ISO Speed 2500
Auto ISO Speed OFF
Lens 70-200mm
Focal Length 126.0mm
Image Size 1995x2556
Image Quality Fine
Flash Off
FE lock OFF
White Balance Mode Auto
AF Mode AI Servo AF
Picture Style Standard
Sharpness 3
Contrast 0
Saturation 0
Color tone 0
Color Space sRGB
Long exposure noise reduction 0:Off
High ISO speed noise reduction 3isable
Highlight tone priority 0isable
Auto Lighting Optimizer 3isable
Peripheral illumination correction Disable
File Size 5805KB
Drive Mode Low-speed continuous shooting
Live View Shooting OFF

[Anderson Photography]

We use a 50D as a backup camera and have shot with it at ISO 2500 but it's not been that noisy. With regard to your exposure compensation at +1, have you thought about leaving it as a normal exposure and then lightening up your images is PS?

[swampler]

Originally Posted by Anderson Photography

We use a 50D as a backup camera and have shot with it at ISO 2500 but it's not been that noisy.

That's why I asked if it had been cropped.

Originally Posted by Anderson Photography

With regard to your exposure compensation at +1, have you thought about leaving it as a normal exposure and then lightening up your images is PS?

That would add more noise because you'd be effectively raising the ISO from 2500 to 5000 (one stop). His shutter speed of 1/500 should be fast enough to stop motion, so I'm thinking he may have missed focus or cropped heavily.