Why is the IQ sooo bad on this hockey image?

Don't be too hard on yourself to deliver the goods to your clients... only be hard on yourself on your quest to perfection! People usually don't even notice the noise since they are used to even worse on their P&S... many times I deliver images that requires noise reduction and they say that it looks great the way it was... go figure! At least it saved me a few hours on PS. They published the images the following day without any noise reduction! They prefer impacting images way more than care for a little noise.

Maybe it's a sign that you should just give up.

namasste wrote in post #9589409
Since this shot was the 30D 70-200 combo, I don't know but on the 1D shots, I did have auto expansion set to 7 pts and that could certainly mess things up in terms of the algorithm in this type of contrast. Operator error is always a possibility so believe me, I haven't ever considered ruling that.

I wonder if the xxD bodies have a similar issue? Don't know....

This isn't your first shutter click so I doubt that user error would cause a lot of images to be soft

I found the post:

Shot looks pretty good to me. A little overexposed and a little soft possibly due to ISO. Here's a bit o touch up.

namasste wrote in post #9588526

Thanks Dan and PG, the touch up looks good and is probably more than acceptable to parents. Ellery, I really appreciate your comments as well. Too bad Chris has to be the proverbial bad apple, huh? LOL!

btw, who ever thought the words HS hockey and overexposed would be used in the same sentence!!!

namasste wrote in post #9590306
Too bad Chris has to be the proverbial bad apple, huh? LOL!

Just filling in for Janes right now.

I got your back Chris. Obvious user error. I would suggest a book by Bryan Peterson...........:p

namasste wrote in post #9589409
Since this shot was the 30D 70-200 combo, I don't know but on the 1D shots, I did have auto expansion set to 7 pts and that could certainly mess things up in terms of the algorithm in this type of contrast. Operator error is always a possibility so believe me, I haven't ever considered ruling that.

My 30D + 70-200 combo does this crap on a regular basis. Only it's not consistently front or back focused, it's just off for no particularly good reason most of the time. My tracking is good and my use of the center AF point on high contrast targets is also good. The camera is just off in la-la land.

Dan-o wrote in post #9590589
I got your back Chris. Obvious user error. I would suggest a book by Bryan Peterson...........:p

oh Munson, now that's just not right! Janes, you're my last hope here and that said, I'm screwed!!!

Sledhed wrote in post #9590362
Just filling in for Janes right now.

Whew! I thought you were talking about me for a second!

Don't worry about the parents...they are not too fussy about OOF shots or noise. And in any case We (you, me and others doing this regularly) likley delete from the final set many images that parents would not be able to tell anything is wrong with even before they see them!

namasste wrote in post #9588747
Thanks guys. Chris, I looked at some of yours and you are far too modest. For me its a combo of the noise (I know 1600 ISO) and softness that are killing me on this one. Zoombrowsser showed the focus point right on the middle of the upper chest so I began wondering about possible backfocus. I don't know but I feel sick about having to provide this set of images to parents. Maybe (hopefully) they aren't as picky as I am.

Thanks Scott and no parents won't be as picky as you and I might be!