Night time action shots with Canon 70D: Hi All My mother asked if I would ask you guys how to take Action shots (rodeo and aerial motor bikes) at night in variable lighting conditions.

Christine105 Loc: Brisbane, Australia

Hi All

My mother asked if I would ask you guys how to take Action shots (rodeo and aerial motor bikes) at night in variable lighting conditions. She tried sports mode which took the ISO up to 6400 and everything is so grainy she has had to ditch the lot. (Canon70D)

Would very much appreciate your help as technical stuff is not my strong point. Oh also, she's a lurker :) :) and really enjoys UHH. Have suggested she joins in her own right, but she's a bit shy.

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

Starting point and see what happens from there.
Aperture priority
200mm F/2.8
ISO 1600

85mm F/1.8
ISO 1600

High ISO noise reduction turned on. (no good for sequences)

Christine105 Loc: Brisbane, Australia

lighthouse wrote:

Starting point and see what happens from there.
Aperture priority
200mm F/2.8
ISO 1600

85mm F/1.8
ISO 1600

High ISO noise reduction turned on. (no good for sequences)

Thank you Lighthouse. Will pass this on. My only concern with this is she always complains about too much noise above ISO800 even though the Canon 70D is supposed to handle low light. I do appreciate your replying though. :)

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

What lenses does she have?

Christine105 Loc: Brisbane, Australia

RichardTaylor wrote:

What lenses does she have?

Hi Richard

All Canon

She has a 70-300 L lens, 17-55 EFS, 24-105 L lens. Thank you for asking :)

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

Christine105 wrote:

Thank you Lighthouse. Will pass this on. My only concern with this is she always complains about too much noise above ISO800 even though the Canon 70D is supposed to handle low light. I do appreciate your replying though. :)

My wife has a 70d and I have a 7d. I shot quite a bit of a rodeo at night at 1600 ISO and I was barely able to save them with Topaz noise. She also complains about noise above 400 ISO.

Both of these cameras are noisy at anything above 400 ISO and the 7d is even noisy at 320 shooting raw and ETTR. For rodeos you cannot turn on the noise reduction because you cannot shoot quick sequences as it takes time to process the noise reduction and write to the card.

I'm heading for a 7dm2 this year. If it too is a noisy camera it will go back. Canon should be ashamed of how noisy these two models are.

Christine105 Loc: Brisbane, Australia

gmcase wrote:

My wife has a 70d and I have a 7d. I shot quite a ... (show quote)

Hi Gmcase

Thank you for your response. Will let her know that the NR is useless for this type of shooting. :) Hope you have better luck with the 7dm2. Lots of my friends have this and love it, although they are shooting in daylight which changes the dynamics a bit. They haven't been shooting action at night which is the bugbear here. :)

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

gmcase wrote:

My wife has a 70d and I have a 7d. I shot quite a ... (show quote)

A big IF in my next sentence ...

IF you have the leeway in shutter speed to be able to do it ..... overexpose with shutter speed without blowing the whites. Noise hides in the shadows.
So if the light lets you shoot at 1/2000th, but the movement lets you shoot at 1/800th - shoot overexposed at 1/800th and darken in post work. You will have less noticeable noise.

Like I said .. a big IF.
It may work, it may not.

Christine105 Loc: Brisbane, Australia

lighthouse wrote:

A big IF in my next sentence ...

IF you have the leeway in shutter speed to be able to do it ..... overexpose with shutter speed without blowing the whites. Noise hides in the shadows.
So if the light lets you shoot at 1/2000th, but the movement lets you shoot at 1/800th - shoot overexposed at 1/800th and darken in post work. You will have less noticeable noise.

Like I said .. a big IF.
It may work, it may not.

Thank you Lighthouse. That was the way I was thinking also, especially as we have more details when exposing to the right. Will pass that on for her to try out. :) Pleased to hear we are on the same page in our thinking :)

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

Try shooting raw and apply some nose reduction, possibly selectively, when post processing.

Also what size images is she publishing?
Smaller image sizes can hide a mutitude of sins (including noise) so if she is only publishing for web use or for smaller prints she may be able to get away with 2-4mp images.
If she is real desperate she may want to try B&W conversions.

jim quist Loc: Missouri

I get great night results with a canon 1d mk 4. You could easily use an iso of 800. get a lens with a 2.8 and you are set to go. Noise shows up most in dark areas so Im not sure the black and white is a way to hide noise. There are some great programs that help reduce noise when you edit your images.

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

lighthouse wrote:

A big IF in my next sentence ...

IF you have the leeway in shutter speed to be able to do it ..... overexpose with shutter speed without blowing the whites. Noise hides in the shadows.
So if the light lets you shoot at 1/2000th, but the movement lets you shoot at 1/800th - shoot overexposed at 1/800th and darken in post work. You will have less noticeable noise.

Like I said .. a big IF.
It may work, it may not.

I have tried all combinations and since noise on the 7d is always a problem except at ISO 100 I try to keep it as low as possible without getting blurred shots or too shallow of a depth of field or both.

Christine105 Loc: Brisbane, Australia

RichardTaylor wrote:

Try shooting raw and apply some nose reduction, possibly selectively, when post processing.

Also what size images is she publishing?
Smaller image sizes can hide a mutitude of sins (including noise) so if she is only publishing for web use or for smaller prints she may be able to get away with 2-4mp images.
If she is real desperate she may want to try B&W conversions.

Richard, she is shooting raw and the images where so noisy she couldn't rescue them at all. I'm not sure of the size she is publishing, however when she imported them into Lightroom, they were so noisy she could hardly see the image, so she just threw them all away and got very upset. I think she feels they were way beyond saving even by converting them. Thank you for asking.

Christine105 Loc: Brisbane, Australia

jim quist wrote:

I get great night results with a canon 1d mk 4. You could easily use an iso of 800. get a lens with a 2.8 and you are set to go. Noise shows up most in dark areas so Im not sure the black and white is a way to hide noise. There are some great programs that help reduce noise when you edit your images.

Hi Jim

If she or I had a Canon 1dmk4 we would be very disappointed if we had noisy images.

However she doesn't so she has to work with what she has. I am wondering if she is trying to push the equipment past its limit (still in range for your camera though).

She can't afford anything higher and is asking how to handle the action at night with what she has. So with that in mind, do you have any suggestions?

Christine105 Loc: Brisbane, Australia

gmcase wrote:

I have tried all combinations and since noise on the 7d is always a problem except at ISO 100 I try to keep it as low as possible without getting blurred shots or too shallow of a depth of field or both.

Thank you gmcase. This is what she is up against also and trying to figure out. :)