EOS R10 Nighttime photos coming too grainy

[Mariaaguirre]

EOS R10 with canon lens 100-400

I need help, I’m currently having a problem where my pictures are coming out too grainy, at night, and I really need help I just bought the canon r10 with the 100-400 and I don’t know what to put my settings in M so they don’t come out grainy, I shoot sports photography especially for soccer, and I wanted to start for football too, but I can find out what the problem is, I’ve decrease the iso and increased it but I don’t know what to do can someone please help, thank you!

[shadowsports]

Greetings,

The RF 100-400 is a variable aperture lens f5.6 to f8. I use mine as a lightweight (daytime) lens for hikes and backyard wildlife.  

It should be able to yield acceptable results outdoors during the day in good light or bright sun. To reduce grain, you'd want to use a lower ISO, with a shutter speed fast enough to freeze action.

This lens is not a good choice for indoor or outdoor nighttime sports even with stadium style field lighting.  It's aperture typically isn't large enough for adequate light gather capability in the majority of indoor or nighttime sports situations.  

The sensor in the R10 can be forgiving (allowing) you to shoot in low light with an ISO range 3200-6400 (reasonably).  Beyond that and things will start to get noisy (grainy) fast.  When light is low, try to keep it below 3200.  (lower the better),  However, the only way to combat this with a slower lens is to slow your shutter speed down.  There is only so far you can go, as fast moving subjects will be blurred and if you aren't very steady motion blur can also occur.  

There are 3 components to the exposure triangle.  Aperture, ISO and shutter speed.  These are the 3 components that effect exposure.  Your lens choice is very important when shooting in challenging lighting situations since you can only compensate so much (ISO and shutter speed) If the lens can't open up (aperture) and let in more light.  

I'm not exactly sure what your shooting conditions are?  Sounds like night time on a high school field?  If so, your lens is not going to work due to its slow aperture.

One thing you will definitely want to do is read the manual for your camera.  This is the best way to become familiar with its settings and features. 

Canon : Product Manual : EOS R10 https://share.google/j1GItnBTbJzwGjFHu

While you're learning, I suggest you use the automatic mode [A+] which can help you achieve shots with correct exposure, being mindful that pushing the camera and lens beyond its capability will still result in less than satisfying images.

With practice, you will become familiar with various shooting conditions and gain a better understanding of exposure and the camera's capabilities.  In time you will be able to take control of more aspects of exposure and how to take advantage of each "leg" of the exposure triangle.  

Another helpful tool is Canon's digital photo professional.  This is a free post-processing editor that you can download.  You'll find that here under downloads.

Canon Support for EOS R10 | Canon U.S.A., Inc. https://share.google/LyPDGAi7jhSdOExBw

If you'd like to post some of the pictures you're taking, we can evaluate and give additional advice.  Please make sure you are shooting in RAW.  Note, you will not be able to load full size RAW images here in the forum so, you can upload those to a file sharing service like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. and provide us with a link.

There's a large group of us here that would be more than happy to help and answer any questions that you may have. 🙂

[Mariaaguirre]

Thank you so much and yes, I started photography and last September and I used the canon T7 with the 75 to 300 MM lens, but I upgraded to the camera I posted about but the only problem I have is when I take pictures at night it’s a bunch of green and the pictures come out super dark and even when I go to edit them in Lightroom if I put up the exposure, it’s just completely bad it’s green And a lot of grain and I don’t know what to do. I lower my iso and go back to Lightroom and increase the exposure and that doesn’t help the picture comes out horrible and I don’t know if using my old lens the 75 to 300 with my Canon or 10 if that lens would help out at night both of the pictures that I inserted down below the first one is during the day the camera works great and the 100 to 400 lines works perfectly, but if you check the last photo, that’s my camera and the same lens during the night and the pictures come out horrible I haven’t tried it in a high school field because I mostly shoot soccer and I wanted to start football

 

 

[shadowsports]

Hi,

So based on your images, I see now you are using a EF 100-400 adapted to your R10.  Not the RF version.  It would be slightly better from a aperture standpoint, but again aperture increases as you zoom diminishing light gathering capability and present challenges in low light.  Your 75-300 is also not going to work in low light, not to mention it's image quality being entry level.  It takes photos, that's about it.  

For night time photography you are going to need a lens with at minimum f2.8 aperture.  A lens with a constant aperture is preferred.  This is the only way you will be able to use a shutter speed fast enough to capture the action without pushing the camera's sensor to its limits.  

I'd recommend the RF 70-200 f2.8.  

This is not an inexpensive lens, but you get what you'll pay for. It would be an investment that you would be able to use with this body and the next.  Lenses are the real investment in photography. Body's come and go. 

[wq9nsc]

The EF 100-400 is a very decent lens that works well for sports in the sunlight but that lens at night on an APS-C sensor body (smaller photosites and thus less light gathered than a full frame with the same pixel resolution) isn't going to work for sports.  1/640 is the absolute minimum shutter speed for soccer or football and you will still get some blur on a lot of shots with that speed, I use 1/1,000 as my "floor" for shutter speed.

Attached photos are from a decently illuminated (upper middle but not elite illumination) field and the example shot from soccer pushes ISO to 12,800 using a f2.8 lens wide open, the football photo was captured on a less well illuminated section of the field pushing ISO to 20,000.  Using your EF 100-400 lens under the same conditions would push the required ISO outside of the usable range of your R-10 thus the dark and grainy photos you are getting.

Sensors are much better now than they were when I first started with digital but you still need "fast" (wide aperture) lenses for sports which means f2.8.  There is another current discussion in the forum about the Sigma 120-300 f2.8 lens which might be a budget friendly alternative that hits the aperture and the focal length sweet spot with your APS-C sensor camera.

Photos below were captured at ISO 12,800 and ISO 20,000 using Canon EF 70-200 f2.8 and EF 400 f2.8 glass respectively.  Shot in RAW with default NR in Canon's DPP software so no special noise reduction beyond the basics.

Rodger1DX III EF 70-200 f2.8 1/1000 12,8001DX III EF 400 f2.8 1/1000 ISO 20,000