Indoor motocross action photography-high ISO and no flash

srich250

Hello and good day,
I would appreciate any advice on ISO's shooting motocross racing w/o flash.

my location: indoor field where the Arizona Diamondbacks play, http://www.chasefieldevents.com.
equipment: canon 50D and canon 5D Mk II, 70-200mm 2.8 L, 85mm 1.2 L, 1.2x converter

I'm worried about high noise when shooting at high iso's w/o flash.

has anyone shot in this environment where iso's of 1250-1600 are needed, F2.8-4, and speeds of 500-800?

have you been able to produce magazine quality prints of this detail?

thanks a lot,
scott

torags

If you shoot bursts you can't really use flash. I set my Nikon D700 to max 1600.

I lot of Nik guys claim they shoot up to 6400; but I've never had luck that high

I think the key (unfortunately) is your cropping. If you can fill the frame with the composition you will have more keepers. I know that's tough.

What I try to do is shoot at lower SS when picking slower sections of track (tight turns)

SS 500 -800 is pretty high. Here is 320, iso 1400, f2.8 (Daytona Supercross) cropped

Zerodog

The biggest thing I see with the OP photo is the WB is way yellow. If you get WB and exposure right go for higher ISOs and see what you can get out of your body.

With my D3s I feel great about 12,000 ISO But that is cheating. My 300s is pretty good if I nail the exposure at 3200. I to really stop action. So shutter speeds over 1000 are generally what I try to go for.

Torags your 700 should be rocking it at 3200 and 4000 iso. Take advantage of that sensor!

torags

You might be right. Let's see some of your stuff at 12500 iso

johng

Yes, WB is off and oversaturated - looks like you've completely blown the red channel. For whatever reason Canon seems to like to do that. Drop the saturation back in-camera or in your RAW conversion if shooting RAW.

jomarlight

I use the olympus E500 with aperture priority speed 1/1000sec at F4.5

mercphoto

I agree the WB is way off, and also that the shutter speeds are higher than you need as well.

Any reason why you can't or won't use flash?

srich250

motocross test photos from Monster Energy Supercross
Thank you so very much for all your replies. I wish I would have seen your replies before saturday night. but I practiced a few and attached is a shot from the race with my Canon 50D, 70-200mm @ 153mm, 1/1000th, F3.2, ISO 1600, no fill flash. In Lightroom 3 i increased the exposure .8 and added a little fill, detail, and increased the vibrance a lot w/o adding saturation.

I shot in Raw small because i was only testing instead of shooting RAW large where i would if these were going to be printed.

1. If I shot the telephoto shots on RAW large, would that help me go to a higher iso with less/same noise?
2. if i shot with my 5D mark II would that make a significant difference. the only prob is that i lose the 1.6 factor.
3. do you guys consider this a grainy or too high of an iso photo as professionals?



The lighting in this stadium is not very bright as you can see from the photo and my increase in exposure to get it to this image. Does this image look professional as far as WB, exposure, focus, etc? there are some with and w/o flash here as well that i would love your critique on!!!! i always appreciate learning from other shooters. thank you very very much.

http://www.scottrichphotography.com/Sports/Monster-Supercross-Phx-photos/15476778_3fABQ#1158807708_hoLES-A-LB

srich250

great shot. yeah that ss 320 with them that far away and coming at you looks beautiful. i'm assuming Daytona speedway probably has a little more light on it. maybe a stop more. not sure sure though. what exposure adjustments did you have to make to this?

torags wrote: »

If you shoot bursts you can't really use flash. I set my Nikon D700 to max 1600.

I lot of Nik guys claim they shoot up to 6400; but I've never had luck that high

I think the key (unfortunately) is your cropping. If you can fill the frame with the composition you will have more keepers. I know that's tough.

What I try to do is shoot at lower SS when picking slower sections of track (tight turns)

SS 500 -800 is pretty high. Here is 320, iso 1400, f2.8 (Daytona Supercross) cropped

torags

Hey Scott

My answer to
1. Shooting in raw doesn't change the native iso. But you might have more flexibility in a noise reduction program
2. Keep you crop sensor on lens or you'll have to crop more to get same image, which would put you further behind the 8 ball
3. Image you posted is too small, but you might consider a slower shutter speed when they're catching air (they're pretty slow airborn). Then you might get some spoke blur on the rear wheel

On my shot, I shoot raw, chimp & PP, I don't keep track of EV adj; but I was close 98mm on full frame

BTW this was one of my best shots of that night. ss400, f4,iso1600 @ 100mm



I'll be shooting superX at the end of the month, I'll check back in

Good luck

srich250

awesome. thank you very much. have a good one.
scott

srich250

sweet, where are you shooting supercross?

Zerodog

torags wrote: »

You might be right. Let's see some of your stuff at 12500 iso

Here you go. These have all been tweaked a little bit in LR2 or 3 All of them could be pushed further in LR or PS with fixing up some of the details and fence halos.
12,800 ISO 1/1600 f3.5


Another from the same night, same settings.


ISO 10,000 1/500 f2.8


ISO 8000 1/320 f2.8 We printed this 16x24 with no real noise visible




Now like I said the D3s is cheating. Here are some examples from the 300s at high ISOs

ISO 3200 1/1200 f2.8



This one is pushing the envelope for sure. Has had quite a bit of NR in Lightroom.
ISO 5000 1/1000 f2.8 shot as a JPEG




I think the if you get the exposure right in camera and WB very close to right in camera ISO performance goes way up. With RAW you can get away with a little bit more adjustments. But for most event shooting I like the file size of JPEG and letting the camera do some of the heavy lifting of processing. Active D is pretty good in some situations too. Cropping makes the whole problem worse. If you can get away with very little cropping, noise is less of an issue.