Shooting Hockey with 70D using 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM images are grainy

Hi I'm having some troubles getting crisp clear images using a 70D with a canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM. I'm looking for someone who could help me here. The hockey rink I shoot in has very poor lighting. These are my camera settings Manual, Raw format using Custom White Balance, ISO 3200 to 4000 at 1/640 to 1/1000 f/2.8. I Hope someone here is a able to points me in the right direction so I can get better quality images with less grain. Thank you and have a great day.

Couple things straight off:

Long focal length, high iso, and a crop is going to give you grain.
1/1000 is too fast a s/s. What age & level are you shooting? You should be able to stop the action at 1/500 or 1/640, and if it's little kids, 1/400 will work. Drop the iso a corresponding amount as you lower the s/s.

You can "cheat" to see what it takes to get a properly exposed shot in your rink. By cheat I mean to take a stop action shot like at a face-off or a goalie-ready position. The athletes are not in motion at these times, so you don't have to stop them with a fast shutter. You can drop s/s to about 1/100 or 1/160 and then really drop iso, or close aperture to 3.2 or 4.0 for some more dof.
The down side is it's not really an action shot then. But, you will see what it takes to properly expose in your building and the you can work it up from there.

Important - post a shot or two - it helps when answering.

cheers!

I try and fill frame so I don't have to crop. Or do you mean a crop sensor? Ages 16 to 20. Here is one sample. The image below was shot at focal length 125mm 1/800 ISO 3200 f/2.8 and edited in photo shop. Also I have tried lowering the iso and s/s. I have dropped it as low as 1/500 iso 2500 f/2.8 but find the images still grainy looking like this image.

You can try to ETTR to help with the noise.

I found that 1/500 was the s/s needed for me when I was shooting hockey. That froze the action. I never shot with a 70D though. Always with my 7D. But a 70D should be a little better in low light.

If you have any prime lenses try shooting with them to see how that looks.

Is the sample shot original or edited?

If edited, how much did you increase exposure/shadows? As JohnTrav alluded to, you need to "expose to the right" in these situations. The noise results from getting the exposure right in camera (pushing the ISO) will be cleaner than the results from using a lower ISO and increasing the exposure in post. Noise is ravenous in darker areas of an image, thus increasing the exposure in those areas in post magnifies the noise.

Is noise reduction part of your work flow? If not, it should be. Regardless of what program/plugin you use, just be careful not to overdo it since it can soften your subject. Adjust the amount of NR with the image at 100% so you can see these effects. Looks like you missed focus on this shot as well. With NR, you need to start with a sharp image to expect good results.

One random and unrelated thing I noticed about the image was the color space. Do a search on that... others can explain it much better than me, but in general, you should be changing the color space to sRGB for web display purposes, otherwise your colors can look dull.

exposure +0.5 to +1.5 shadows about +18. You also mentioned the focus because that's another issue I have ran into. Should I be using a monopod? The glass is not that clean either, which doesn't help. I find tracking my subject I'll take 7 shot burst and only get 2 that focus right on the subject the rest are just off and blurry. I'm going to give all your suggestions a try next game. Thank you all.

Shooting through the glass can cost you upwards of 2 full stops of light....

See if you can shoot from just over the glass or from the bench and see what your results are. It's possible that the glass is doing more than just cutting your exposure...

I like the idea of 1/1000" shutter speed but try dropping that to 1/640"

rawk316 wrote in post #17303563
exposure +0.5 to +1.5 shadows about +18.

That's the worst case scenario for noise - you're underexposed, boosting exposure in post and lifting shadows (where noise is most noticeable).

Work on over-exposing a touch and you should see some significant improvement.

My immediate thought upon seeing the image was shooting through glass. Even if you get decent lighting and noise, shooting through glass is not going to turn out unless it is highly maintained and clean.

If you must go through the glass, (TTG) get low on it, right above the dasher, it usually the cleanest there. Also, on a side board as there's fewer puck marks.
Get the lens hood right up to the glass and maybe try to block out any remaining glare with your left hand. It's not impossible to get a good shot TTG, but it does take some work.

nice job with all the help here ,, good job by those that jumped in , ,,, making these pages good stuff

Yup. Great answers here. I'm sure it's a combination of shooting TTG as well as getting the post-processing. Personally, I like to see my blacks a bit blacker, so I would back off on the increase in shadows a bit. Also, most importantly, and as already mentioned, try to expose to the right (ETTR). The last thing you want to have to do when shooting at ISO 3200 is to increase the exposure even more in post. Shoot in manual and find an exposure that works for you. Just make sure, if anything, you ETTR; not the opposite. Personally, what I like to do since I shoot snowboarding (similar in the sense that most of the scene is white), is to turn on highlight alerts as well as check my histogram when initially setting up my exposure. I choose an aperture and SS and then increase the ISO until I start to blow out the highlights. The moment I see blown highlights, I review what part of the image is blown out and then decide whether or not I'm ok with that. Quite often I'll allow SOME parts of the image to be blown out but as soon as I see detail lost in my subject (or too much of the snow/ice), I back it off a bit and stick with that exposure. Hope that helps.

PS: When post-processing, if your exposure looks 'OK', try increasing whites rather then bumping up the overall exposure. See if that makes a difference. Also, when working in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), I always press 'O' to turn on Highlight Clipping and 'U' to turn on Shadow clipping. Without this, I'd be lost

for a 70D you are shooting on the edge of the iso limit (actually over) - iso 3200 for me is 'ok' with the right post processing on a 5D3 but with the 7D2 I try and stop at 2500

all the tips mention are very good - especially noise reduction, pushing the white instead of exposure, brings blacks down slightly

older hockey rinks in darks corners basically suck - but with each arena I play with the things above, also contrast if I want to gets spectators faces coming through the rink glass

it is all small things in PP but they add up to make enough of a difference between what you posted to better than you posted

if you would like, you send send me a private message with a link to that raw file and I can give it a try

I shot almost all my action stuff in arenas at 1/1000, ISO 2000-3200, 70-200 @ 2.8 or 135 @f2


paul

I few pictures from last night's game

All pictures were with my new 7D2 - ISO 3200, SS 1/500, 70-200 @2.8.

I usually try and shoot lower ISO and faster SS but arena light was low

Also shooting hockey with a 70D, with similar settings: ISO 3200, 1/640s - 1/800 s (never as fast as 1/1000s), f2.8 or 2.5 (using a 100 f2).

As has been pointed out, shooting through the glass does cost you, but I like the angle, and it is often the only choice. I find that moving the black level down, sometimes by as much as -50, does wonders for cleaning up the "haze" you get when you shoot through the glass. I also use Imagenomic Noiseware Professional to clean up the grain, though LR does a good job these days.

Starting with a good exposure helps, so you don't have to push the exposure later. This includes white balance. I usually set a custom white balance by shooting the ice at a low shutter speed (so I don't have to worry about light cycling) - it doesn't even need to be in focus. (This probably wouldn't matter shooting in RAW, but I shoot JPEG for hockey because (i) I will take a lot of pictures in a hockey game and (ii) they are always going to be a bit grainy at ISO 3200 anyway.