EOS Rebel T8i Help in considering a new lens:

[Toniko]

I only have the default lens for my camera (EF-S 18-55mm is STM). I am relearning after a long break from using SLRs. I have a lot of sports and evening shots to take and the photos are often grainy. I am learning that my ISO has been way too high but since my subjects are moving quickly I am feeling stuck between blur from a slow shutter or noise from a high ISO ☹️  

I'm open to other ideas with my current lens but feel like I may just be asking too much of it.

The top photo is testing a lower ISO and tripod but it is the dress without a busy toddler in it so that will be a big factor in the actual photos...

trying the better settings but subject not moving for the test (also later at night)iso was very highiso was very high

[stevet1]

Toniko,

For one thing, you are asking a lot for your lens to handle. Photographing sports with perhaps long distance shots is a lot different than close-up shots of people indoors like your toddler.

Better to have a noisy photo than a blurry one.

For your indoor close-ups, you could try a 50mm f/1.8. They run about $125 now. Because you can use a wider aperture like f/2 or f/2.8, that will help lower your ISO. You can also increase your shutter speed to capture any sudden movements.

For your sports shots, will they be indoors, or outdoors? Will they be in daylight, or at night under the lights?

I don't have any experience with shooting sports, so I can't give you any recommendations for a lens, but there are members in here who do shoot a lot of sports, and they would be willing to give you some suggestions.

You'll have to tell them what kind of sports though, and under what kind of conditions, and how away you will be from the action.

Steve Thomas

[Robegul]

Hi Toniko,

I have a suggestion, but it's a bit more involved than a new lens... (Although I agree with the previous post of the 50 mm f1.8.  Might be the first thing to try).

I have recently had some more time to play around with my camera etc. and have started to shoot in RAW and post-process.  I would suggest trying some shots in RAW and then (this is the time consuming part to learn...) processing the photos in a RAW processing software like Canon DPP (free), or some other software.  You can bring up the shadows much better than you can by doing this on the JPEG.  So you can get a better overall picture.

Canon DPP is not very good, but it's free!   

I started using DXO Photolab about a year ago, and it is terrific in bringing up the shadows as it has a de-noising tool that is fantastic.  But it will set you back some $ and has a fair learning curve.  Not something you pick up in a night.

If you decide to try this route, I would take a few RAW pics and download Canon DPP and give it a try.  I believe there is a "shadow" slider in DPP and you can just bring this up and see if it helps.

Good luck!

[Tintype_18]

Looking at the photos, what were your settings? Lots to consider for sports photos as mentioned by Steve.

[Toniko]

These photos were taken outdoors at dusk.

Pic 3:  f4 1/30 ISO 5000

Pic 2:   f4 1/25  ISO 6400

Pic 1:   f4 1/160  ISO 800

Baseball outdoors in the evening will be my focus for sports photos but may also include tennis midday outdoors as well.

I will try the raw setting too!

[wq9nsc]

As others noted, for sports you typically need a lens with decent telephoto length AND a wide aperture and that combination isn't inexpensive.  I use a variety of f2.8 zoom and prime lenses for sports and even with those I am often shooting images in the ISO 40,000 range to keep shutter speed high enough to avoid motion blur.  My 1DX III bodies handle this higher ISO nicely but there is going to be a lot more grain in this ISO range with a T8i so manage your expectations AND plan your shots so that you will have no or extremely minimal cropping which will greatly emphasize the grain noise. 

As others noted, be sure to shoot RAW instead of JPG because this preserves all of the original sensor data allowing you to do much more "clean up" in post.  I have the full Adobe creative cloud but I do 99% of my sports photos using nothing but Canon DPP.

With sports, if you are lens and/or camera body limited, then you have to make compromises and adjustments.  You can slow shutter speed down (1/1,000 is my preferred minimum for football) and capture slower moving plays or capture at the moment a player is briefly frozen.  You may get a few decent captures @ 1/250 but those will have to be perfectly timed and executed and the same shutter speed suggestion is true for basketball and soccer.  Typically anything below 1/640 is going to create a lot of blurred shots and there will be some blurring in most shots even at 1/640 or 1/800.  Image stabilization will do nothing to reduce athlete motion blur and I keep IS turned off when shooting sports.

Another compromise is most sports venues aren't evenly illuminated so concentrate your activity on the best illuminated area.

As examples below, here are images from a typical HS football field captured with 1DX II and III bodies with f2.8 lens wide open at 1/1,000.  I shoot in manual exposure mode with fixed shutter speed and aperture, ISO "floats" to complete the exposure triangle.  With this combination, parts of the endzone force the body to ISO 40,000 BUT on this same field in the better illuminated part of the field the same aperture and shutter speed drops the ISO to a very reasonable ISO 6,400. The sample images vary respectively from ISO 16,000 to ISO 40,000 with the final reference image at 6,400 showing that there are fairly bright spots even on a dark field.

So pick and choose where/what you capture and a compromise lens will work but realistically for a dark venue a f4 lens is questionable and anything with a narrower aperture just isn't going to work well.  If I had been shooting with f4 glass, the ISO would have doubled in all of these sample images.

Rodger

ISO 16000ISO 16000ISO 25600ISO 25600ISO 40000ISO 6400

[Toniko]

These photos were taken outdoors at dusk.

Pic 3:  f4 1/30 ISO 5000

Pic 2:   f4 1/25  ISO 6400

Pic 1:   f4 1/160  ISO 800

Baseball outdoors in the evening will be my focus for sports photos but may also include tennis midday outdoors as well.

I will try the raw setting too!

[stevet1]

Toniko,

Well, you can tell from Pic# 1, that 1/160 is way too fast for those lighting conditions. With #'s 2 and 3, you're getting a little closer. If flash is out of the question, you might need a tripod and shutter speeds in the 1 second range.

For sports, you can do a google search for Best Lenses for Shooting Sports. I know a lot of people seem to like the 70-200, but you're looking at prices in the $2,000 range, and without knowing your budget, it's hard to make any recommendations.

The 55-250 will run in the $300 range, and would be fine for your tennis matches, but forbaseball, you might want a little more reach, especially if you want to capture fly balls deep to center field. The problem here is that with lenses zoomed way in, you lose about lot of light. At night, that's going to be tricky, unless you shoot, as Roger said, a well lit part of the field.

Steve Thomas

[Robegul]

Hello again Toniko,

I wrote a short article some time back on RAW for beginners.   I posted it on the Canon forum today.  You might check that out - explains some of the benefits of shooting in RAW, and equally important, how not to make the same mistakes I did in processing the pictures!

Cheers

https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/Camera-Software/RAW-Processing-for-beginners/td-p/511432