Too much noise and underexposed pictures

<p>I was shooting gymnastics competition last weekend and all of my pictures are undereposed. Please advise how I can make them look normal. Also, because I was shooting with ISO 1600 they have a lot of noise. What do I have to use to make them look good.<br>

THANKS A LOT</p>

<p>Dennis, what lens/camera combination were you using? What mode?</p>

<p>I think you're shooting in manual mode, but in trying to compensate for motion blur, your shutter speeds may be too low. A fast (high aperture) lens will definitely help. I've given up shooting sports in bad lighting (ie. HS gymnasiums and even some pro stadiums -- I'm looking at you, Tokyo Dome) simply because my camera and lens combo can't keep up.</p>

<p>We need some more detail.</p>

<p>What camera ? What lens ? What aperture ?</p>

<p>Shooting at 1600 ISO will be noisey, unless you have a very expensive digital camera.</p>

<p>I suspect you have a "kit" lens that came with your camera, and you had to zoom as much as you could to get your shots. With the starter lenes, the max aperture ( the most wide open setting for the lens ), is something like f5.6. If the gym was not well lit, f5.6 doesn't let in a lot of light. To compensate, you would have to shoot with a longer shutter speed to get it exposed properly, but .... you probably want to freeze the action, which means a FAST shutter. So, up went the ISO to get you a decent shutter speed, and that yeilds noise.</p>

<p>Shooting sports, indoors, in not so good lighting is why pros spend big bucks on long lenes that shoot at f2.8 even zoomed.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>what were your camera settings and shooting mode? M, Av, Tv, P, Green Square, Running man? ISO 1600 will create noise, you can either live with it or do some reduction in post processing. Its not all that bad though, if you look at a full spread in Sports Illustrated you will see noise, its the nature of the beast and it happens to everyone, even SI photographers.</p>

<p>Underexposure is a sure recipe for noise. Even if your camera has good noise control at 1600, underexposure will bring up the noise level. You may have to choose between noise and motion blur. You could get a faster lens which can be expensive. Another thing you can do is check your manual and see if you can set your camera to higher noise reduction. My D90 for example has different levels of noise reduction. Most PP programs have some kind of noise reduction that can help some. I use Elements 5.0 and the noise reduction is not great, but it does help some. Better than that are noise reduction programs such as Noise Ninja. </p>

<p>Next time try to avoid underexposing by using a lower shutter speed. You can try to minimize motion blur by panning and by shooting at the peak of motion when the motion slows or stops for a split second. Otherwise you'll have to get a faster lens or deal with the noise.</p>

<p>What camera are you using? P&S 's are notorious for noise at ISO's higher than 400. DSLR's can handle much higher ISO's w/o much noise.</p>

<p>I was using canon 40d with 70-200 f2.8. My goal was to freeze motion, so I set up shutter speed at 500. All pictures went out too dark, so I am trying to post process them now and make look nice.</p>

<p>Some good noise removal tools can take you a long way. If you are going to use the pictures for web use or small prints alot of the noise and also some of the blur invoced by the noise removal software will be minimized by scaling them down, remember you're looking at them full size on your monitor and inspecting pixels.</p>

<p>If you're shooting wide open (F 2.8) that should be enough for *most* situations at 1/500s. I usually get barely enough light at ISO 1600 and at f5.6 in most gymnasiums. One thing I usually do is do a spot meter on a face in the lights and fix it at manual for the rest of the night. How was the lighting in the event?</p>

<p>The lighting was bad. The worst I ever had. That's why I had to underexpose to keep the shutter speed at 1/500s.</p>

<p>open it up to ISO 3200, it is an expanded ISO function in your menu. That will help. I assume you were shooting at f2.8.</p>