50D no flash issue

[calexs74]

I was shooting a wedding this weekend and I was using a 50d. I had two flashes that were either acting crazy or going out on me. I decided to go flashless since there was another shooter. The place had a decent amount of light and my iso was at 1250 I believe. I got home and looked at the pics and they were really bad. At least to me they were. They were not sharp at all and didn't take to kindly to sharpening. If I take pics outside without a flash they look great but there is plenty of light and I'm shooting at iso 100 or 200. I guess my question is is there an iso cut off where the pictures start looking like trash compared to flash pictures on a crop camera? It seems anything above 800 things start to get a little fuzzy. I have done tests indoors before usually at iso 1600 and iso 3200 and the pics didn't look to hot. I've done the same thing with my 5d II and they look considerably better but Has anyone had this issue or had success taking 1200+ iso pictues with a 50d or another crop camera?

[Patrick]

I often take basketball pics with the 50D & 70-200 2.8 at ISO 6400.
Yes they are noisy but even after I boost the brightness with ACR and remove noise with Noise Ninja and they are fine. I print large prints from these images with no problems, they look fine.

My personal experience with noise is that it is not as bad if the exposure is correct from the get go.

Also, the 50D handles 6400 about as well as the 40D does 3200 in my experiences.

[calexs74]

Thx for the reply.
It's weird they aren't that noisy. They are just not very clear. My flash started working again later and the pics were fine.Maybe I can post one later to show what I am talking about. Is it other people's experience that there is a significant overall quality difference between flash/outdoor shots and indoor shots with low-medium light?, using a crop sensor camera of course.

[tim]

Post a photo, and a 100% crop.

[SYS]

As for the flash issue, I seriously wouldn't shoot something as important as a wedding without a battery pack or two. The Canon CP-E4 is fantastic.

As for the noise issue, from my experience shooting in low light settings a lot where flash is forbidden -- typically in ISO1600 -- getting proper exposures is the key. I found that if I nail the exposure, the noise is a lot friendlier.

[jonwhite]

What shutter speed were you getting ? if you were getting shutter speeds around or below 1/60 then it may just be camera shake or subject movement blur ..... and if you had a lot of movemnt in the subjects or yourself then you would need even higher than 1/60 and or flash to freeze the movement.

From what you have posted so far I have a feeling that this may turn out to be a case of you not knowing your gear very well rather than a fault with a camera or flash, what modes were you shooting in?

[egordon99]

In addition to the inevitable noise, shooting at high ISO sometimes goes along with wide apertures and border-line shutter speeds, so you might be seeing lots of mis-focus/shallow DOF/motion blur/camera shake.

[calexs74]

I looked at some more of the pictures I took and I think I figured out the problem. I was shooting at f3.5 1250 iso and 1/125 shutter speed. I think the issue was camera shake. It was a 70-200 sigma 2.8 HSM 2 lens. I usually have an IS lens when shooting. I think I was around the long end when I shot. I think I read that Tim said a 70-200 without IS was useless. I'm starting to see that. Some of my photos were ok and others were slightly blurry. I'm still disappointed with the quality even on the no-blurry ones. I still think that to some degree all the pictures were affected around that focal length. We had a couple of other shooters there so we have more than enough pics. The pictures from a shorter focal length were much better.

[beme]

i had a similar problem.what i did, increase the shutter speed & iso. i used 430EX in manual mode to give a little punch to the ambient. in some actions 125th is fine, for me, in low light condition, 160th to 200th is needed. noise problem, i'm pretty much happy with noise ninja software.

cheers