topic Re: Grainy Pictures Issues in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

EOS R10 Indoor sports pics are grainy and blurry

Agi2025 — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 13:43:28 GMT

Hello,

I'm in desperate need of some advise, please. I was taking High School wrestling pictures that turned out super grainy and blurry and would love some help. A couple of pictures attached. My setup was the following:

Canon R10 with a 70-200 lens. TV setting. I was experimenting with the shutter speed between 250 and 500 and different ISO levels. When I used a higher shutter speed (1/1000) it was making the images very dark and even bumping up ISO the image looked dark.

I didn't use a monopod but had the camera on my knees for support. I will use a monopod for the next tournament.

I was shooting in RAW but it wouldn't let me upload the RAW picture despite a CR3 file so I had to rename it to a jpeg.

Appreciate any help I could get to have better quality pictures next time :-).

Thank you in advance for taking the time to provide some feedback.

Agi

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

Waddizzle — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:26:09 GMT

Yes, you can’t upload RAW files to the forum Could you upload them to a public file sharing platform like Dropbox, Google, OneDrive?

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

jrhoffman75 — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 13:25:11 GMT

@Agi2025 wrote:

Hello,

I'm in desperate need of some advise, please. I was taking High School wrestling pictures that turned out super grainy and blurry and would love some help. A couple of pictures attached. My setup was the following:

Canon R10 with a 70-200 lens. TV setting. I was experimenting with the shutter speed between 250 and 500 and different ISO levels. When I used a higher shutter speed (1/1000) it was making the images very dark and even bumping up ISO the image looked dark.

I didn't use a monopod but had the camera on my knees for support. I will use a monopod for the next tournament.

I was shooting in RAW but it wouldn't let me upload the RAW picture despite a CR3 file so I had to rename it to a jpeg.

Appreciate any help I could get to have better quality pictures next time :-).

Thank you in advance for taking the time to provide some feedback.

Agi

What shooting mode were you in? Where you looking at the camera's exposure meter in the viewfinder?

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

wq9nsc — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 14:41:03 GMT

HS gyms are often poorly illuminated and the lighting may not be even so if the wrestling is set up in the "bad" areas then it will force ISO higher.

1/500 is going to be the minimum speed for avoiding subject blur in wrestling, I normally shoot sports at 1/1,000 or better but I have only shot wrestling once and it was in a very poorly illuminated gym so I used f2 (135 and 200mm) primes and dropped shutter speed to 1/500. At the shutter speed you need for wrestling you don't need a monopod and it will reduce your ability to move quickly for the best capture angle.

Which 70-200mm lens do you have? A f2.8 version should work OK for wrestling, a f4 version is going to push your ISO higher in a dark gym. Gym lighting often creates an odd color shift, setting DPP color temperature to white priority may do it depending upon the gym; otherwise you will want to set color temperature.

The attached images were captured several years ago using a 1DX with EF 135 f2 and 1DX II with EF 200 f2, shutter speed 1/640, aperture wide open, manually set shutter and aperture with ISO floating to complete the exposure triangle. ISO varied between 2000 and 2500 for the images I captured.

Rodger

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

LeeP — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:03:06 GMT

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but I think they look fine as is. Capturing the moment at a match--as you did rather well--is much more important than grain considerations. As has been said you had bad lighting that likely drove up ISO to get a higher shutter speed.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

jrhoffman75 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:34:16 GMT

@LeeP wrote:

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but I think they look fine as is. Capturing the moment at a match--as you did rather well--is much more important than grain considerations. As has been said you had bad lighting that likely drove up ISO to get a higher shutter speed.

Agree. Rick Sammon used to say on tongue in cheek his podcast "If people notice the grain in your photo it probably isn't a very good photo." It is much easier to correct for grain than it is a blurry photo.

If you are going to be shooting in Manual mode it is important to be looking at your exposure meter. If it's dark in your EVF it's going to be dark on the computer.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

TomRamsey — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 01:44:55 GMT

I'm kind of with the others here that these don't look that bad. The lighting in these HS gyms can be pretty tough to work with. You could get more help by providing the EXIF info for the pictures. Noise reduction can get rid of a lot of grain that you don't want.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

LeeP — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 05:26:39 GMT

Why not just live with the grain? It's certainly unobtrusive to my eye.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

Agi2025 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:25:49 GMT

Hi John,

I was using TV. I did not look at the camera's exposure meter in the viewfinder - something to look for next time. I don't often have a lot of time to adjust settings as I have to go to different buildings and different mats with different lighting within a short time :-(.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

Agi2025 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:31:47 GMT

Thank you for sharing your wrestling pictures and info. The lens is f2.8.

Looks like the TV setting might not be the best one for me to use for these type of pictures.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

Agi2025 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:35:40 GMT

Thank you LeeP for your feedback!

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

Agi2025 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:37:27 GMT

Thanks John! Yes, will be focusing on exposure meter at next event.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

Agi2025 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:41:42 GMT

Hi Tom,

I had noise reduction enabled. Below is an example of EXIF info:

Canon EOS R10, 70 mm, f/3.2, 1/250, ISO 4000 EXP - 0.7

Thank you!

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

Agi2025 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:46:32 GMT

Trying once more to share with Dropbox 🙂

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/81r4r4n7x2x023pnk1lak/Canon-Example-2.jpg?rlkey=r8bscymuvro3vw2r0tnqvmir5&st=xy7dbqq1&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/im7xr2ps8xmg9wdg2lh79/Canon-Example-4.CR3?rlkey=zt4b3qdh8wmnjf0nqjegxwknm&st=edi0azan&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ivr6paniwa11u61s7r34f/Canon-Example-6.CR3?rlkey=5f2jlehpxlrq7lt73rp20qx14&st=chupj1ss&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/eyrjmxv6xkrtrnr7a4guz/Canon-Example-3.CR3?rlkey=qxnbynd27cwdhygmru6z3vx2y&st=k80tpt9e&dl=0

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

p4pictures — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 10:43:55 GMT

A low light environment and the need for an action freezing shutter speed means fast lenses and higher ISO values. You already mentioned using the f/2.8 version of the 70-200mm, so that's a good start. If you use a fixed ISO value with Tv then you do need to either keep watching for a blinking aperture value, or make use of the safety shift feature of your camera in the custom functions.

If using Tv mode, and the lens aperture value starts blinking this tells you the lens aperture cannot be set to a value for a good exposure, and you should adjust the ISO value.

If using Tv mode, you can enable safety shift in the camera custom functions, and this will either adjust the chosen shutter speed, or ISO value when the lens aperture cannot be set. I think of it as a helping hand to get me reasonable exposures when I'm not able to fully pay attention to the flashing aperture. I suggest enabling safety shift with ISO.

As to the noise in your photos, this is not particularly bad, but could certainly benefit from using noise reduction in your post processing of the RAW images. Canon DPP is free to use and does a good job to reduce noise but sometimes I need to increase the noise reduction from the default DPP settings. Secondly Photoshop or Lightroom has the Denoise capability and this is also rather effective to reduce the noise. There are other applications like Topz Denoise that do a similar job.

I always work with the idea that a good sharp picture with a bit of noise is infinitely better than a clean blurry one!

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

jrhoffman75 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 11:07:36 GMT

@Agi2025 wrote:

Hi Tom,

I had noise reduction enabled. Below is an example of EXIF info:

Canon EOS R10, 70 mm, f/3.2, 1/250, ISO 4000 EXP - 0.7

Thank you!

Is there a reason why you dialed in -0.7 exposure compensation? If the EC was 0 you could have a lower ISO.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

jrhoffman75 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:11:17 GMT

@Agi2025 wrote:

Hello,

I'm in desperate need of some advise, please. I was taking High School wrestling pictures that turned out super grainy and blurry and would love some help. A couple of pictures attached. My setup was the following:

Canon R10 with a 70-200 lens. TV setting. I was experimenting with the shutter speed between 250 and 500 and different ISO levels. When I used a higher shutter speed (1/1000) it was making the images very dark and even bumping up ISO the image looked dark.

I didn't use a monopod but had the camera on my knees for support. I will use a monopod for the next tournament.

I was shooting in RAW but it wouldn't let me upload the RAW picture despite a CR3 file so I had to rename it to a jpeg.

Appreciate any help I could get to have better quality pictures next time :-).

Thank you in advance for taking the time to provide some feedback.

Agi

Hi Agi.

I downloaded the .CR3 files and looked at them using Canon DPP4.

I have a few thoughts.

1. I see you are shooting in RAW, which is good. If you are using photo editing software my suggestion is turn off all in-camera image processing settings. You selected the highest setting for High ISO Noise Reduction. Noise reduction works by smoothing the pixels and frequently you can get the "plastic" look which I think your images show.

2. Your images show negative exposure compensation. Is there a reason you selected that? Setting zero EC will allow a lower ISO.

3. Some of the images are at an aperture smaller than f/2.8. If you aren't trying to adjust for increased depth of field use f/2.8.

I will import the images into Lightroom and see what I can do.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

jrhoffman75 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:40:49 GMT

This image shows that you applied -1 EC and Lightroom Auto adjust added .84 stops of exposure. If 0 EC was used you could have had 1 stop lower ISO.

But LrC did a good job with noise reduction and sharpness looks good.

Next time try shooting Tv and Auto ISO. In your setup menu you can set a maximum ISO of 6400. That should clean up well in software.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:25:52 GMT

If you go from -1 exp. comp. to 0 I'd expect to have to use a stop higher ISO? I often shoot -1 to lower ISO one stop.

Re: Grainy Pictures Issues

p4pictures — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 19:28:38 GMT

If you underexpose the photos then you move more of the image data in to the shadows, where there is less gradation, more noise and no and way to lift the data back out. It's better to get the exposure right, or let the camera try rather than intentionally underexpose.

One challenge is that if you manually set the ISO to a high value, then set the shutter speed to a value needed to freeze motion, then the only thing left for the camera is aperture, and when the lens is wide open the result is underexposed shots. I suggest you try setting the ISO to say 1600, set your shutter speed as you need and then set the camera custom functions so that safety shift with ISO is enabled. One of your RAW images was ISO 12800, so adjust the ISO auto range to allow that as normally it is set for 100 - 6400 by default. Safety shift can only use the same range as ISO Auto.