Which lens? EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM or EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM - for indoor volleyball...

[lilh]

Or perhaps something else?

I'm looking for recommendations for the best lens option for indoor volleyball, typically shot in poorly-lit high school gyms. I'd also use it for indoor flag football, but this is not as critical as the volleyball. I hate noise!  I recently upgraded from an 80D (still own) to a 5D Mk 4. I own the Canon 24-70 2.8L II. (also own the 100-400L IS II for outdoor baseball, softball, and football).  While the 24-70 is a great lens, I do a lot of cropping (I prefer the close-ups).  Even at ISO 3200 (or 600!), cropped images are just too noisy for my preference.  I'm wondering if adding another lens will remedy this, and I'm considering one of the following:

EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM  (I've heard the III is not worth the additional cost)

EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM

Will the f2.8 at the longer focal length where I don't have to crop as much, give me enough light to limit the noise?  Or should I go with the faster f1.4 and sacfrifice the 86-200 length and the zoom factor? I'm aware with this lens I'd need to watch the DOF at the faster fstop.

I also shoot in RAW and process (including noise reduction) w/LR and ocassionally PS.

I know I can rent to try, but an overwhelming consensus one way or the other might remedy the need for that.

Thanks in advance for recommendations!

[ebiggs1]

"Football is the easiest to shoot because the plays are more predictable ..."

This is a point I did not mention in the three most important things for great sports photography.  Corrected version is, "The three most important things in photography is location, location and know the sport."

As for the other topic of WB, remember ISO can influence WB and color.   While it is true there is no WB when you shoot Raw, Raw does record exposure settings. It is the luminosity of the screen as recorded by the sensor.  The sensor doesn't react the same to ISO 10,000 as it does to ISO 100. When you use LR it imports the Raw file and uses the embedded jpg tag file as a starting point to make a viewable image. You can not view a Raw file as is so this conversion is required. However, LR then uses it own rendering scheme to make the image you see in the Library module. IMHO, it is better, the best, way to do so.

Now it is up to you to make the WB and other adjustments you deem fit.

[ebiggs1]

A word about using these extreme ISO numbers.  They are, IMHO, a, "use that high ISO or don't get the shot" situation.

I avoid them as much as I possibly can. It is a last resort.

[RobertTheFat]

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@lilh wrote:

...

I think I'm just trying to convince myself that I 'need' the 70-200.  🙂  Everybody  raves about it!

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Join the crowd. Pretty much every serious photographer in this forum owns the 70-200, or at least has access to one. I had one at work, but had to give it back when I retired. I didn't think I could do without it, so I bought myself one. Considered it an unavoidable expense associated with retiring.

[lilh]

I dabbled in photography many, many years ago and then started shooting my grandkids sports (baseball, softball, football, volleyball) and fell back in love with it.  

Football is my favorite sport to shoot, and sometimes I'm lucky enough to get the timing down right.  This was one of my favorites as far as timing this past season.  (Although it helps that my grandson is the one carrying the ball)

Volleyball is difficult because of the light and sometimes it's hard to find the best place to stand.  But I'm determined to get better at it!

Thanks for you advice! 

[wq9nsc]

A very nice image!  Was your grandson able to keep his footing and score?

Although you want to keep the ISO as low as possible, sometimes you have to go with what would have been considered ridiculously high sensor speed settings just a few years ago.  The capture below was shot across the field in one of the darkest spots on the field at ISO 40,000.  I would have much preferred good lighting and ISO 4,000 instead but the receiver was incredibly happy to have a photo of the best catch of his career thus far and the ability of the camera to record a usable image at that ISO made the photo possible.

Because of our orientation and experience we always try to do better  which we should but some images that I am not overjoyed at taking are the images that made players and parents very happy.  It is just another version of the old saying that one man's trash is another man's treasure.  Excuses shouldn't be used that allow us to grow complacent or sloppy but it is also easy to cross the boundary line into putting everything under a microscope like the "pixel peepers" who lose sight of why we capture images in the first place.

Have fun with the volleyball games.  I am leaving shortly to photograph senior night during halftime of the varsity basketball game.

Rodger

[lilh]

Holy Cow! That shot's incredible for 40,000 ISO. And of course for the timing and the memory it provides. I never would have expected that!  (And it gives me hope!  If my ISO was up that high, I probably wouldn't even have bothered taking the shot)

I know what you mean about the images that make players and parents happy.  I take, and post, shots of all the kids on their teams.  But I take many more than I can possibly post and I'm always wondering if the parents would have chosen different ones. I enjoy the post processing very much, but I only have time for so many each week!

My grandson did keep his footing, but one of the running backs (? I think that's what you call them) nabbed him right before the endzone.  It was about a 70 yard run though!  

[ebiggs1]

" If my ISO was up that high, I probably wouldn't even have bothered taking the shot..."

Not trying to take anything away from Rodger's shot, which is amazing, but sometimes we can get by with a slower SS than you might think. Thus using a more friendly ISO setting. Of course the ability to get the shot at all is fantastic.

Shooting Raw format gives a lot, more than you may think, of latitude.  Also, in a case like this a high frame rate is necessary unless you are just lucky.  The extremely high frame rate of the 1DX and 1DX Mk II are made for sports photography.

I can imagine that young man was thrilled with that shot!  And, that is what its all about and why we do it.  Right?

[lilh]

I can imagine that young man was thrilled with that shot!  And, that is what its all about and why we do it.  Right?

Absolutely!  But in all honestly, it thrills ME when I get lucky enough to hit the timing just right. Continuos shutter release is a must!  Another example of this below. (Granddaughter is the base runner).  This is with the 80D which has a decent fps rate. 

Unfortunately the 1DXs are out of my price range - and would be too heavy in any case.  These old elbows and wrists can't handle that much weight and keep it still!  I do use a monopod most of the time, but not always.  I actually screw a table top tripod into the bottom of the monopod.  Gives me more stability, I can still move around with ease, and I can use 2 hands for other things if I need to (with the strap around my neck, just in case!)

And I always shoot in RAW. Post processing is as much fun, if not more, than taking the pictures!

[ebiggs1]

Nice shot!  

[TCampbell]

BTW, noise is relatively easy to control if you think about how things work.

Every camera has noise at every ISO.  You just don't notice it at low ISOs.  If you were to shoot an exposure with the lens covered, you'd get a black photo (no suprise).  But if you actually moused over each individual pixel, you'd find the pixels don't technically read "0, 0, 0" for RGB ... they'd read some very low non-zero values.  This is the bias value of the sensor.  You'd also notice that the value varies from pixel to pixel by a very tiny amount.  

When you boost ISO, the camera has to amplify the values.   This means pixels that were so close (but not identical) that you could not notice a difference, start to show more of a difference and ... now you "notice" the noise.  

To de-noise, the software compares pixels to it's neighbors and averages down the values and this makes the nosie go away.  But a side-effect of this is that areas that are supposed to show sharp detail now start to look a little soft (becuase crisp sharp edges were "averaged" with their neighbors.)

Noise is very noticeable in flat areas that lack important detail.  This means you can REALLY help an image if you could protect the areas that need to be sharp (edges of contrast) and just de-noise the areas away from the edges.  

In Photoshop you can create an "edge mask" (there's no specific tool with this name ... but there are techniques to build one fairly quickly) and then de-noise the image with the edge-mask protecting the edges.

But it turns out this is a built-in feature if you use Lightroom.

Pull up your photo, switch to the Develop module, then scroll down along the right to find the "Detail" panel (that's the panel that lets you do sharpening and de-noising).

In the "Sharpening" section of the Detail box, you'll find a slider named "Masking".

Here's the trick.  Instead of adjusting the slider ... HOLD DOWN your Alt/Option key WHILE moving the slider.

When the slider is all the way left and you're holding down the Alt/Option key, the whole image will go solid white.  What this means is EVERYTHING is "in bounds" when it comes to adjustments for sharpening or de-noising).  

As you drag the slider to the right, more and more of the image will start to go black and what you'll notice is that just edges of contrast (where you should have detail) are still white.  This is your "edge mask".

When you apply sharpening, it will ONLY sharpen in areas that are white (edges of contrast) and it will NOT attempt to sharpen the black areas (flatter areas of the image that don't have contrasty detail).  This means you can sharpen just the parts of the image that matter without driving up noise globally across the entire image.

ALSO... when you apply "noise reduction", it will de-noise the flat areas that lack contrasty detail but will PROTECT the edges that need contrasty detail.

There are other 3rd party tools that also apply clever techniquest (noise tends to be more noticeble in dark areas and less noticeable in highlights ... so they apply more or less aggressive de-noising depening on the tonal range of the area in the image.

Lastly... you can always grab the "adjustment brush" tool in Lightroom and tell it to just apply sharpeing or de-noising in specific areas.  

I used to hate noise ... but now that I've learned technqiues for dealing with it ... it's really no big deal.