Low Light - Action Shots

[magook]

I bought a 135 2.0L and haven't had a chance to play with it yet. I also tried a 200 2.8L at a shoot and turned up with some dark shots. How do you know how high to set the ISO? Should you crank it to 1600 or is 800, 400 enough? I'm using a shutter speed of around 1/320 or a tad faster. If the pictures are dark should I not worry about them and fix it later in Photoshop or is it better to crank the ISO?



Any help would be appreciated. Planning on taking picture in a hockey arena

using a 300D as my weapon.

[jbradc]

Regardless of which lens you are using you have to nail the exposure. If your images are dark then they are under exposed. How does the histogram look?
You want a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action, so set the iso give you that shutter speed at your desired F-Stop.

[DaveG]

I bought a 135 2.0L and haven't had a chance to play with it yet. I also tried a 200 2.8L at a shoot and turned up with some dark shots. How do you know how high to set the ISO? Should you crank it to 1600 or is 800, 400 enough? I'm using a shutter speed of around 1/320 or a tad faster. If the pictures are dark should I not worry about them and fix it later in Photoshop or is it better to crank the ISO?



Any help would be appreciated. Planning on taking picture in a hockey arena

using a 300D as my weapon.


When I get to the rink I start to test to see what the exposure is going to be. In most rinks I'd start with ISO 1600, open up the lens and then see what shutterspeed I can get. I wouldn't shoot any sport and especially hockey at shutterspeeds under 1/500 of a second. If I got a reading of 1/2000 of a second @ f4 with ISO 1600, then I'd be thinking about lowering the ISO at least until I was at 1/1000 @ f2. But that exposure example is likely to be a pie-in-the-sky and if I could get 1/1000 @f2 with ISO 1600, I'D BE REALLY HAPPY!

Obviously the correct exposure has to be a part of this, but you need to bias that exposure towards shutterspeed with the aperture being wide open. You MUST freeze the action and you have to be prepared to use as high an ISO as it takes to get to at least 1/500 of a second. If you are at ISO 3200, f2 and get a shutterspeed of 1/25o or 1/250, then find something else to do because it's to dark in that building to shoot.

[merrrrjig]

I like cranking up the ISO better than fixing them later!

[Citizensmith]

I assume you are paying attention to the appeture. If you've set the shutter speed to 1/320 the camera will adjust the appeture (In Tv mode) to maintain a correct exposure. If it reads f/2 and is flashing the camera is telling you the image will be under exposed. In manual mode the +/- scale will tell you whether or not the camera thinks the image is exposed correctly.

ISO 800 is fine, but 1600 and 3200 really do look noisy. So go ahead and crank, but be aware of the problems that it will cause.