| 1/500 | f2.0 | ISO 1600 | 50mm | RAW |
Getting a photo today was a challenge. I was busy all day, and then had a church youth group meeting after dinner. But when I showed up they were getting ready to play volleyball, so I pulled out my camera.
I quickly figured out, however, that the lighting in our church's simple gymnasium was pretty bad. I had to use my 50mm f1.8 lens, open all the way to f2, in order to get enough light (at ISO 1600) for stop action photos.
To make matters worse, this lens doesn't have a quick autofocus, so many of my photos were out of focus.
Here is one of the few acceptable ones I feel I got. It was taken during the serve and I cropped in on it to focus on the concentration on his face and the blur of the ball as it was hit. This blur really helps add a feeling of action to the shot.
Because of the light colored room divider behind him, the camera was fooled and it underexposed the photo a little. That is why it is so grainy. When shooting at high ISO's, it is vitally important to properly expose the photo during the shot. This will help reduce the graininess of the photo. The more you have to fix the exposure after the shot with your photo editing software, the worse the grain will be.
The lighting was also casting a horrible color that was really hard to nail down in post-processing. Due to being so behind in my posts, I didn't spend much time on it.
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3 comments:
I've noticed that some of my pictures I've posted on my blog are way grainy and didn't know why they came out that way. Thanks for some tips. (Man, I can't wait until I know what in the heck I'm doing!)
Yep. I feel the same way. In fact, I think even those we think as masters of photography still feel like that!
Just remember, the lower the ISO number, the less graininess your photo should have.
But sometimes that graininess is a good thing. That's why when I am shooting with black and white in mind, I typically go higher ISO to capture some of the "old-time" feel that black and white film used to have.
Well, I was shooting all-auto for some of them and wasn't happy, so I switched to manual and did put the ISO to 100 and adjusted the WB as well. Still more grainy than I'd like, but better. I don't mind a little graininess, but not as much as I'm getting. I just need to take a class. ; )
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