Night Football Noise Help

Sledhed wrote in post #8760421
Danny is correct, one of the best things you can do to help control noise is to expose the image properly. If that means using a higher ISO, then you use a higher ISO.

+1.. Here is an example, and I even take it a step further, when I go to 3200 or even 6400 I expose up to 1/3 over to help kill noise.

Here is an example. Night football ISO 3200, over exposed a touch, brought back down in lightroom when converted to jpg. Only post is WB correction, this is the noise level SOC.

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My 50D handles noise very well. I regulary shoot HS football at ISO 3200 & 6400. The noise is nowhere near that bad when properly exposed & ran through Noise Ninja or other such software.

When I can get back on my laptop, I will post a link to one of my threads as an example.

Raise your ISO to 3200 and shoot away!

Last year, I did some tests. I shot the same exact scene at ISO 1600 and ISO 3200 with my 40D, varying the exposure in 1/2 stop increments. I was trying to find out if it is better to under expose ISO 1600 by 1/2 stop or overexpose ISO 3200 by 1/2 stop. I then corrected the exposure in Lightroom. Oh, yea, I shot RAW too to ensure I had the most dynamic range possible.

Guess what.

Noise got rapidly worse as I under exposed. ISO 1600 underexposed by 1/2 stop was noticeably noiser than ISO 3200 overexposed by 1/2 stop or exposed correctly.