frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

I stand behind what I said. 1/500 is a minimum for football. You need iso as low as you can go, and only raise it when you can not get enough light with shutter opening and shutter speed. Iso should always be as low as you can go, for the conditions.

cascom Loc: Redmond

I totally agree. You have players going in opposite directions. Most high school fields have uneven lighting. I would never go below 1/500 unless I was creating an effect. (Rain at a slow shutter setting makes a great capture). I pushed Tri-X to 1600 in the 80s and panned with a 180mm 2.8. I probably shot at 1/250 or 1/500. I accepted blur as normal. Today with a D500, I shoot at 1/800 F4 and post-process to get rid of the noise.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

cascom Loc: Redmond

Ched49 Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.

Like i said it takes practise

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

Yes it does. Which a competent photographer can do at the site, early, per a practice under the same conditions.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I'm not seeing any significant noise. Reducing to 1/500 would brighten the image, but for my money, this photo is fine and can be easily lightened with any decent editor.

I loaded it into Affinity2 and quickly used the Develop Persona to increase the exposure and black point, reduce the brightness and contrast a tad. Could have done a lot more but this looked good to me on my monitor and only spent about a minute on the whole
thing.

Personally, I would probably just change the camera to 1/500 as others have noted, and you should really get right where you want to be, certainly either is close enough to edit to your liking.

(Download)

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

I love it 💚💛💛💚

birdseyeview Loc: Indiana

not such a bad photo with a little pp

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

I think one of the little guys is going to take a major hit 💚🖤🖤🖤💚

DanielB Loc: San Diego, Ca

Defiantly underexposed. Shutter speed is good for the subject and the noise is pretty low. I wouldn't mess with lowering shutter speed, I'd bump up the ISO or even Auto ISO.

I shoot a Canon R5 and I have no problem going up to ISO 6500 or more before I have to think too much about noise reduction.

Charles 46277 Loc: Fulton County, KY

I understand people would like it brighter, but it is obviously a night game, and it should look like it--and the white lines on the ground are pure white but have good detail. The skin that shows is also the right brightness level, for me, but of course you can lighten it up just a bit if you want to. I think you are talking about the ground when you speak of noise--the players are crisp and clear. The high ISO will lose something somewhere, and the ground is the best place for it. (I grunt if I must go above ISO 200--but action shows no mercy.)

For publication no doubt they will want less contrast, but the noise level would not be a problem, would it? Noise is more noticeable with high contrast, yes? In printing, the people are the main event, and this looks printable to me, with a little less contrast. I like to see rich, deep blacks and a bit of texture in snow white highlights. The middle can be tweaked.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Not sure exactly why this post has come back, but I missed it the first time, so will make a quick comment about it. I shoot a D500 as one of my cameras and find that it generally does a pretty good job in low light...much better than its reputation. Problems generally arise from insufficient exposure, as has been noted several times in this discussion. At an ISO of 2500, as you have shot here, the D500 has plenty of sensitivity, but only about 6.5 stops of dynamic range. If you underexpose by one stop, that range is reduced to 5.5 stops. This image may be underexposed by more like 1.5-2 stops, so you may have as little as 4.5 or 5 stops of usable dynamic range in your image. That's not a whole lot.

I agree with others that your photograph really looks quite nice as it is. But noise is likely to become a problem if you try to process it up to a more "normal" appearance. That's because you will be adding into the image luminance and contrast information that is not in your original exposure. The process of adding information that wasn't originally present is very likely to add noise that wasn't there, either (or amplifies noise that was originally there in amounts that were not noticeable or problematic). My suggestion is that you work to capture your original images at full exposure, even though they may appear brighter straight out of the camera than you remember (or than you desire). Then adjust to get a more low-key image, if that's what you are after.

lbarnett25 Loc: Baldwinsville, NY

I own a D500 and find it produces noise quite easily. Even in daytime.

mnmark Loc: NE Minnesota

Noise will be more pronounced on an underexposed image, more so in the dark areas of the photo. 2500 sounds pretty low for a high school night game. I normally am closer to 6400 to 10000 depending on the field. The new denoising functions in Lightroom, Topaz and others work well and would be worth a try.