1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Indoor is tough for any camera/lens combination when the lighting is poor. And I think volleyball is the hardest sport to shoot, at least it is for me.
The T5 sensor is pretty old technology so it doesn't have anywhere close to the noise performance of more recent cameras at higher ISO. I helped a HS student get her T5 set up a couple of years ago and as I recall the noise got really bad at ISO 3200 and up. Shooting in RAW (instead of jpg) will get all of the performance of which the sensor is capable and allows you to do much more in post (including noise reduction) so do that if you are not already.
Given that sensor, I would try 1/800 and 1/640 which will allow marginally more light and may produce better results than shooting at 1/1,000. I have shot a lot of volleyball at 1/800 and it works pretty well, a little ball motion blur at times.
Is that gym unusually dark? I am surprised you are having to push luminance that much in post with the ISO @ 4,000 and a f2.8 lens. Pushing it in post is just going to accentuate the noise. There is a HS gym in the area where I used Canon EF 85 f1.8 and EF 200 f2 glass because the lighting was so poor before they upgraded to LED lighting. You are probably getting about as much as the T5 can offer under the conditions.
I don't believe the T5 provides for auto white priority which is what I use as a post-processing preset to correct for color temperature in artificial sports lighting. Hopefully the lighting color temperature is pretty stable across the gym so that you can fine tune color temp for one photo and apply that to the others; you need to shoot in RAW instead of jpg to do this tuning.
Photos below were shot with 70-200 f2.8 @ 1/800 but using a camera with a high performance full frame sensor so ISO 4,000 doesn't bother it, ISO 3,200 - 6,400 is where this particular gym puts the ISO for a standard exposure using 1/800 and f2.8 glass.
Rodger
The lens is the first gen, L IS USM. We've been using manual mode just trying to find some sort of balance between ISO and shutter speed, but can't figure it out at all. Our options are basically photos that are too blurry or photos that are so full of noise that the players blend into the background. I can't figure out how to send photos on here because all of the originals are over 5 MB, like I said, no idea what I'm doing... Here's one of the better photos, but I edited it to increase Luminance by 19 and exposure by 0.43 in Lightroom. The shutter speed was at 1/1000, ISO was set to auto so it took it at 4000
From the sample photo you posted I think you're getting a pretty good handle on the situation. I really don't see any noise issues in this example. As mentioned above, shooting at 1/500 or 1/000 using Tv mode looks like a good place to start.
First off, are you shooting in RAW? It will allow to more easily deal with things like noise, white balance and exposure compared to shooting jpegs. If Lightroom seems a bit daunting you should try using Canon's (FREE) DPP4 software to convert your RAW files to jpegs.
Also when dealing with noise try to work while viewing your images at 100% magnification. Working at 200%, 300% or higher can make you a little nuts and you'll start to remove image detail. Are your shots destined to be made into large prints, or mainly for viewing on a monitor?
Hope you don't mind my making some minor adjustments to your sample photo. It just took a few minutes in PS to warm up the white balance a bit, add a "skosh" of sharpening and a little cropping to give it bit more pop.
Indoor is tough for any camera/lens combination when the lighting is poor. And I think volleyball is the hardest sport to shoot, at least it is for me.
The T5 sensor is pretty old technology so it doesn't have anywhere close to the noise performance of more recent cameras at higher ISO. I helped a HS student get her T5 set up a couple of years ago and as I recall the noise got really bad at ISO 3200 and up. Shooting in RAW (instead of jpg) will get all of the performance of which the sensor is capable and allows you to do much more in post (including noise reduction) so do that if you are not already.
Given that sensor, I would try 1/800 and 1/640 which will allow marginally more light and may produce better results than shooting at 1/1,000. I have shot a lot of volleyball at 1/800 and it works pretty well, a little ball motion blur at times.
Is that gym unusually dark? I am surprised you are having to push luminance that much in post with the ISO @ 4,000 and a f2.8 lens. Pushing it in post is just going to accentuate the noise. There is a HS gym in the area where I used Canon EF 85 f1.8 and EF 200 f2 glass because the lighting was so poor before they upgraded to LED lighting. You are probably getting about as much as the T5 can offer under the conditions.
I don't believe the T5 provides for auto white priority which is what I use as a post-processing preset to correct for color temperature in artificial sports lighting. Hopefully the lighting color temperature is pretty stable across the gym so that you can fine tune color temp for one photo and apply that to the others; you need to shoot in RAW instead of jpg to do this tuning.
Photos below were shot with 70-200 f2.8 @ 1/800 but using a camera with a high performance full frame sensor so ISO 4,000 doesn't bother it, ISO 3,200 - 6,400 is where this particular gym puts the ISO for a standard exposure using 1/800 and f2.8 glass.
Rodger
