What ISO do you shoot at for SPORTS?

To reduce noise on the D1X series cameras (fairly noisy at 800 ISO) I would set EV comp for +1/3 when inside. As long as there was nothing to create a highlight that would blow out, I would slightly overexpose the shot by 1/3 stop. That would yield an effective ISO of 640. But the shots would have less noise that if I had shot them at 640. In bright light where highlights were an issue, I would set EV to - 1/3. You might try a variation and see if it helps.
 
Whatever it takes to get above 1/250th of a second.

If that means 3200, it means 3200! A noisy image that got the shot is better than a clean image where you don't know WHAT THE HECK you're looking at.
 
Cage fight use a flash they are seeing stars anyway.

Way to kill the mood of the photo. When have you ever seen a good picture of Ali taken with a flash? Up the ISO, down the shutterspeed to get a bit of movement, and take a much better picture. Same applies to any live stage stuff. Lighting and atmosphere is 1/2 of the act, use a flash and the result is just dead boring.
 
maybe some fill flash would help though...

I say shoot it at ISO 800 or 1600. On the 40D, it's barely anything...the XT is pretty bad at 1600, but the 40D I'm sure you'll be satisfied with.
 
I have seen flashes used in UFC bouts and boxing
 
The below image is from the last fight I photographed, you probably saw me post it on another thread. You can see here that ambient light is 75% of the lighting here, and flash was used for fill. I think this was shot at ISO 800.

I only had 1 camera on me at the time, so a flash bracket was no problem. I have no clue what the lighting will be like at the January 26th fight in a whole other city. It's a more expensive ($75/ticket) fight, so I assume the lighting will be just as good if not better. For this fight, I'll have 2 cameras, and don't want to HAVE to have 2 flashes, so bumping the ISO to compensate for no flash should be ok.

The responses here have indeed helped bigtime. I'm trying to weigh out High ISO vs High Flash, but wondering where to draw the line. I know it'll all come down to "try and whatever works best" but it's nice to hear that often a higher ISO is expected for sports, and used by professionals (you guys)

Here's that image where I used a flash for the last fight.


235434347-L.jpg
 
It depends a lot on your taste. The sample picture you posted most likely would not have been as good without some fill flash. They lighting in the ring appears to be almost totally coming from above. There is a good chance there would have been little detail in his face without the fill you used on this shot. It would most likely been totally in the shadows.

I use 1600 for sports all of the time and sometimes use 3200. The key is to have good exposure. If you use 1600 and your image is underexposed you will have tons of noise. A properly exposed image though will very minimal noise with your 40D.

Most of the images in this gallery use ISo 1600. Some still use minimal fill flash to because I prefer it to fill in shadows.
http://martindigital.zenfolio.com/p153219033/?photo=h2EF225B0#787621296

In short, i wouldn't be scared to use 1600 when it's necessary. If you can stop the action with lower, by all means do so. When you can't however... they put 1600 in there for a reason :)

I hope this helps.
Tommy
http://martindigital.zenfolio.com
 
I'm tempted to shoot my next sporting event (cage fight) at 1600 ISO w/ my 40D and XT to get faster shutter speeds, but I surely don't want to come out of there with a bunch of unusably grainy pics.

Basically, all I'm wondering is what ISO do you shoot at for sports, when attaining a high shutter speed is critical?

Hi Keith,

I'm new here, but I thought I'd share my experience. I'm an equine photographer and about a third to half of my shoots are done indoors -- or rather in dark riding arenas. Add a fast moving horse to the equation and it makes photography difficult to say the least. I shoot with a 20D at an ISO of 1600 and a shutter speed of 1/250. If the ambient lighting is decent, I don't necessarily need a flash. If I had a 40D, I'd definitely bump up the ISO because I feel the new Digic III sensor (from what I've seen in other pictures) can handle it.

Amy
 
It depends a lot on your taste. The sample picture you posted most likely would not have been as good without some fill flash. They lighting in the ring appears to be almost totally coming from above. There is a good chance there would have been little detail in his face without the fill you used on this shot. It would most likely been totally in the shadows.

I use 1600 for sports all of the time and sometimes use 3200. The key is to have good exposure. If you use 1600 and your image is underexposed you will have tons of noise. A properly exposed image though will very minimal noise with your 40D.

Most of the images in this gallery use ISo 1600. Some still use minimal fill flash to because I prefer it to fill in shadows.
http://martindigital.zenfolio.com/p153219033/?photo=h2EF225B0#787621296

In short, i wouldn't be scared to use 1600 when it's necessary. If you can stop the action with lower, by all means do so. When you can't however... they put 1600 in there for a reason :)

I hope this helps.
Tommy
http://martindigital.zenfolio.com


NICE pic Tommy.

Seeing this pic is good for this topic, because my eyes don't go to the grainy background, but to the subjects of the image...which are properly exposed, and noise is minimal...

It seems like that awesome image would not have come out near as well if a lower ISO had been used.
 
Cage fight use a flash they are seeing stars anyway.


This guy was about 12 inches from my lens. He had other things to worry about than my flash being bright. Uncropped picture.

248167725-M-2.jpg
 
and back to the ISO. After a few threads and several questions, I understand why sometimes I got grainy images. When I underexpose pictures, and then have to bump up the exposure with PS/LR, the graininess comes out.

For this fight I tried real hard to nail the exposure every shot, and shot at 1600 ISO, and the images had little or no grain. I was very impressed.
 

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