EOS R10 Indoor sports pics are grainy and blurry

[Agi2025]

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

[Waddizzle]

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

[jrhoffman75]

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@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

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

[wq9nsc]

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

[LeeP]

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. 

[jrhoffman75]

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@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. 

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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.

[TomRamsey]

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.

[LeeP]

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

[Agi2025]

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 :-(. 

[Agi2025]

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.