Newbie trying to shoot indoor soccer needs help.....

Hello everyone. I am new to the forum and to using a DSLR camera. I bought a T6i to get started and learn with and it came with the two kit lenses below.

- EF-S 55-250mm 1:4 - 5.6 IS
- EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5 - 5.6 IS

I bought the camera to get into photography and get better pictures of my kids playing soccer. During the fall, all of the photos I took outside looked great. However, ever since we started playing/practicing indoors, the quality of the photos is not very good. The inside of the sports domes where we play have what I am guessing are mercury lights? No matter what settings I use the photos come out grainy. I have tried reducing the ISO, but the camera does not get a enough light. I tried using the flash as well and it help when the subject is close but the rest of the picture is still not very good quality.

If anybody has any tips, I would appreciate it. I have been told to buy a better lens with a lower f-stop, and somebody else suggested an expodisk filter?

I have both those lenses. Good IQ for the price. There are quite a few factors that will effect your images. Your lenses are a little slow for indoor sport photography. I shoot with a 70-200 f2.8 and still get noise but will be much less. You are looking at a significant cost to get a significant speed increase.

Turning ISO down only slows your shutter speeds down and you get to a point you can't anymore. I'm not familiar with the T6i sensor and how high of an ISO you can use and still get decent files.

An expo-disk helps with White Balance but still won't help much with noise. Before you spend money you can cut the side out of an opaque plastic milk carton and set your WB up and see if it works for you. Also a Pringles chips lid will do it.

Mercury lights flicker that will change WB as you shoot. Some cameras have an anti-flicker setting to correct for that. Not sure yours does.

Unless you spend money the few things you can do is shoot with the widest aperture, get the ISO as high as you need to for appropriate shutter speeds and then over expose a bit. Called Expose To The Right or ETTR. This helps a lot with noise.

Do you shoot RAW? Shooting RAW you can adjust WB for each shot to correct for flicker during post processing. Do you use a developer that has Noise Reduction? There are also 3rd party NR plugins.

So a good start is exposure management and then controlling noise during post processing.

It has been a while since I talked about home made WB devices. A coffee filter works as well.

https://mcpactions.com …e-balance-and-save-money/

Expodisk is pretty expensive. You can get WB cards but right now I think noise is your most important thing to solve.

https://www.bhphotovid​eo.com …ite_balance_car​d_set.html

For indoor sports, I think you are going to need faster lenses, like at least f2.8

digital paradise wrote in post #18986865
I have both those lenses. Good IQ for the price. There are quite a few factors that will effect your images. Your lenses are a little slow for indoor sport photography. I shoot with a 70-200 f2.8 and still get noise but will be much less. You are looking at a significant cost to get a significant speed increase.

Turning ISO down only slows your shutter speeds down and you get to a point you can't anymore. I'm not familiar with the T6i sensor and how high of an ISO you can use and still get decent files.

An expo-disk helps with White Balance but still won't help much with noise. Before you spend money you can cut the side out of an opaque plastic milk carton and set your WB up and see if it works for you. Also a Pringles chips lid will do it.

Mercury lights flicker that will change WB as you shoot. Some cameras have an anti-flicker setting to correct for that. Not sure yours does.

Unless you spend money the few things you can do is shoot with the widest aperture, get the ISO as high as you need to for appropriate shutter speeds and then over expose a bit. Called Expose To The Right or ETTR. This helps a lot with noise.

Do you shoot RAW? Shooting RAW you can adjust WB for each shot to correct for flicker during post processing. Do you use a developer that has Noise Reduction? There are also 3rd party NR plugins.

So a good start is exposure management and then controlling noise during post processing.

Really appreciate the reply. I tried shooting RAW but ended up with same quality. I didn't know I can use the large file for, and that you could even post process a file. I am just transferring pictures to my iMac for review and then keep or delete. Guess I have some research to do!

Yes. One of my friends was telling me the same. I am not quite ready to drop $1500 on a f2.8 lens. I found them for $700 or so used on eBay.

The Canon 85mm f1.8 can be a good indoor sports lens for less money but may not have enough reach for soccer.

BigBuck wrote in post #18986909
Really appreciate the reply. I tried shooting RAW but ended up with same quality. I didn't know I can use the large file for, and that you could even post process a file. I am just transferring pictures to my iMac for review and then keep or delete. Guess I have some research to do!

What OS are you currently running on the Mac? The newer versions of Photos let you do quite a bit of post processing, from RAW or from JPEG

BigBuck wrote in post #18986909
Really appreciate the reply. I tried shooting RAW but ended up with same quality. I didn't know I can use the large file for, and that you could even post process a file. I am just transferring pictures to my iMac for review and then keep or delete. Guess I have some research to do!

NR can be applied via the camera to jpegs and believe that is applied when you export. I haven't shot a Jpeg since 2006 so I'm up date on that. Canon's DPP is free and is pretty good at noise which I guess is the same thing as an in camera NR setting. Might be a good starting point that won't cost you anything. Latest version is 4.11.1. Use a large file. You can set it to auto apply NR to the files.

DPP tutorials. Still that lens is kinda of slow. Like duckster said 2.8 if you can find a way to get one.

https://cpn.canon-europe.com …re/dpp_video_tu​torials.do

Maybe rent a fast lens for a game or two and see how your results are, I would guess it will help a lot. Then you can decide if/how much you want to spend. I rented a number of different lenses for sports before purchasing some of my own.

Like mentioned before, add the 85 1.8 to your kit, and use it for a while to get a feel for the sport and lighting and post processing. DPP that Canon gives you freely works quite well for processing the raw file, then you can take the resulting JPG file and do more editing in other tools. many free.

Other settings to worry about:
- Use center AF point, don't let the camera pick and choose which AF points each shot
- Shutter speeds of 1/400th minimum, but strive for 1/1000th if possible
- Use higher ISOs and use tools like Noiseware or Topaz noise reduction plugins to help clean up noise, especially once you hit 3200 or higher
- Use AI Servo, not One Shot

Those two lenses will only be really useful for outdoor meets, indoor will require different tools, unless you become comfortable processing high ISO files.

7D2 at f5.6 at post-dusk outdoor game, but pretty close to the same characteristics as an indoor arena, within a 1/2 stop or so.

duckster wrote in post #18986917
What OS are you currently running on the Mac? The newer versions of Photos let you do quite a bit of post processing, from RAW or from JPEG

Just upgraded it to Catalina.

duckster wrote in post #18987157
Maybe rent a fast lens for a game or two and see how your results are, I would guess it will help a lot. Then you can decide if/how much you want to spend. I rented a number of different lenses for sports before purchasing some of my own.

Exactly what I was looking into. Rent it for a week for about $70. Figured I will give it a try during the next tournament he is in.

The Photos program on your Mac will do quite a bit of post processing. More than I ever can use in fact, but I am no pro, just a hobby shooter. You can do RAW or JPEG. But the fast glass will make more difference than anything else.

I had this same dilemma many years ago... with the original digital rebel.

I'll echo some of the other thoughts you've had on here. The 85 1.8 will be a big step up in terms of low light performance- somewhere around 2 stops or more better than your longer zoom. The reach is not ideal, but indoor fields are typically much smaller than outdoors. With the crop sensor body that you have, you can make that work.

My path was to try the 50mm 1.8 to see if that was workable. It was, but that's a pretty low end lens. I felt the 70-200 was priced way out of my reach at the time, so I bought the 85 1.8. Not quite enough reach for me all the time, so I bought the 200 2.8 (the prime, not the zoom). This was my first L lens, and I really thought it made a big difference in my photos. With the camera I had though, even 2.8 wasn't ideal indoors- I had applied a hack to the camera to increase the iso to 3200... but that was still noisy on that camera, and not giving me enough light to shoot action sports at higher shutter speeds. So... I tried the 135 2.0. Another great lens, but had it's limits.

In the end- I was never 100% happy until I did 2 things- 1- get a camera that handled higher ISOs better. For me, at that time, it was the 40D. Then- I gave up and finally bought the 70-200 2.8 lens and began to get the photos I wanted.

So that's a long story- sorry about that. My lesson was... I should have just sucked it up and bought the better gear from the start. I now have 50 mm, 85mm, 135mm and 200mm lenses that rarely get used. The 70-200 that I resisted buying because of the price is easily my most used lens. I would have saved a lot in the long run to just buy it from the start.

Your camera, btw- probably has higher iso settings than mine did. My guess is that although they are both entry level, yours will be far better at higher isos than mine was, just from the advances in technology.

One last thought- I have been reading a lot lately about the fact that in-camera noise reduction (which only works for jpgs) is far superior to anything you can do in post processing. I haven't really tested this side by side for myself yet, but after shooting for decades in Raw, I have started to shoot soe of my high iso stuff in jpg. So far, I can't argue with the results.

Good luck with whatever you decide!