I was invited to shoot a junior Gymnastics meet and brought along my trusty 135 F2 and my 300 2.8 IS ,not ever having been to the site or this type of event before.
The gym was Cavernous with very high over head Flourescent lighting and ugly green walls and crap every where....
I used my MKII but no matter what I tried I could not get a decent exposed shot.
Either too slow or way too much noise.
I have seen some really nice shots on the forum and at lost to reproduce them.
The max ISO for the MKII is 1600 (or 3200 which is totally unusable) and noticed many of the OP were using 3200 and higher and getting nice shots
Should I be looking at upgrading to a 7D or MKIII to get the extra ISO or am I doomed....
Lethal_weapon wrote:
The max ISO for the MKII is 1600 (or 3200 which is totally unusable) and noticed many of the OP were using 3200 and higher and getting nice shots
Should I be looking at upgrading to a 7D or MKIII to get the extra ISO or am I doomed....
Upgrading to a newer body with better high-ISO is the easy way out.
But don't give up on the nice equipment you already have.
Give H mode (ISO 3200) on the 1D Mk II a chance. Especially with RAW. And then feed it into Neatimage, Noiseware, or NoiseNinja. A custom white balance will also really help... just shoot at a blank piece of white paper and tell the 1D2 menu to use that image to neutralize the subsequent shots.
I think shooting gymnastics in these poorly lit gyms is as tough as it gets, shooting wise. Not to mention the fact that most are small and crammed with a lot of equipment, creating unavoidable distracting backgrounds. I started with a D100, D200 and D2X, but am now fortunate enough to have a D3. The D3 has changed the way I shoot gymnastics With lower ISO performance, you are forced to shoot the static, posed shots, where motion blur isn't a problem. Every once in a while you'll get lucky and get a good action shot but they are far and few between (at least for me they were).
I'm not sure how many events you'll be attending but renting faster glass and even a better performing body is an option too. I agree, noise reduction software is a must for noisy ISOs.
I shoot gymnastics with a Mark II. It can be done. Agreeing with other posts. Shoot raw and plan on a lot of post processing. You can look at what I get at zenfolio.com
Also don't plan on doing large prints from 3200 ISO. 8x10 produce nice results.
Before the MKIII and now the D3, I shot gymnastics with the MKII for 3 years, and at ISO3200 most of the time in dungeons around here.
Shoot in Manual, crank up the ISO to 3200, find a shutter speed that gives you the proper exposure, and widest aperture. f2.8 is really marginal but If 1/250 is all you got then aim for the dance moves because there will be too much motion blur on the tumbling passes. Dial in the WB in Kelvin instead of using auto WB. In gyms with cycling lights you won't be able to do anything about them, but if you're shutter speed is slow enough they won't be so obvious.
Over-expose your shots by 1/3 will make the noise less pronounced. I know this sounds backwards because you're struggling to get a high enough shutter speed. Under-exposed shots will make the noise more pronounced if try to bring up the exposure in post processing. It's a fine balance with 2005 technology
I dug up this old MKII image at ISO3200, f2.8 and 1/400 I believe, before and after Noise Ninja.
I know the type of gym you're talking about. My daughter competes in them all the time. I usually have to shoot at ISO 6400 at F2 hoping for a decent shutter speed. I tend to set the camera to manual around 1/500 and still have to push the exposure 1 stop in post. I use Define 2.0 for noise reduction. I get some ok results and something is better than nothing. Once you learn the routines that really helps to anticipate each shot.
BlueReptile wrote:
Before the MKIII and now the D3, I shot gymnastics with the MKII for 3 years, and at ISO3200 most of the time in dungeons around here.
Shoot in Manual, crank up the ISO to 3200, find a shutter speed that gives you the proper exposure, and widest aperture. f2.8 is really marginal but If 1/250 is all you got then aim for the dance moves because there will be too much motion blur on the tumbling passes. Dial in the WB in Kelvin instead of using auto WB. In gyms with cycling lights you won't be able to do anything about them, but if you're shutter speed is slow enough they won't be so obvious.
Over-expose your shots by 1/3 will make the noise less pronounced. I know this sounds backwards because you're struggling to get a high enough shutter speed. Under-exposed shots will make the noise more pronounced if try to bring up the exposure in post processing. It's a fine balance with 2005 technology ...Show more →
I would consider that great light (3200, 2.8) in the gyms I've been to. There has been only one gym that was better than that so far and most were a couple stops worse.
p.1 #10 · Shooting Gymnastics with Crappy lighting
Get a MkIII and search for the MkIII FlexNR action. My ISO3200 images are about the same as ISO400 on my MKII, and my ISO6400 and ISO12800 images only have slight grain.
FlexNR works up to ISO25600 (you just use EC to achieve ISO's above 6400).
From what I've seen so far, I get results slightly better than the D3, and about on par with the new D3s.
FlexNR is only available for the 1DMKIII and no, it's not like a vanilla nr program (it's specific to the MkIII using multiple passes, custom profiles for the MkIII sensor and the NeatImage engine and leaves all details intact unlike using NeatImage or Noise Ninja or any other NR software alone).
p.1 #11 · Shooting Gymnastics with Crappy lighting
Some great Advice
I was shooting too high at 1600 trying to freeze the action (vault was the worse) so that was my downfall
I will head back to the gym and shoot some practices and play around some more and post up some shots.
Just bought Noise Ninja so I guess I better RTFM.....
p.1 #12 · Shooting Gymnastics with Crappy lighting
With all due respect, if you are convinced ISO3200 is "totally unusable" you might have issues shooting gymnasics (or many sports, for that matter!). If you have to shoot ISO3200 to get properly exposed images there aren't really any alternatives (unless you can strobe, which probably won't be an option with gymnastics). The key--as would be the case for any ISO setting--is taking properly exposed images.
Here's an entire gallery full of nothing but ISO3200 shots from the Mk2n. None of those were run through any kind of NR program, either. And yes, web images will lessen the noise, but I can assure you the noise in the originals was not an issue. Certainly not in the "not usable" category.
p.1 #13 · Shooting Gymnastics with Crappy lighting
Scott Sewell wrote: Here's an entire gallery full of nothing but ISO3200 shots from the Mk2n. None of those were run through any kind of NR program, either.
I bet the OP wishes his dim-nasium had stage lighting like that!
