I've Max'd out my T2i... Looking to upgrade to?

TallDude · Jul 8, 2017

I've learned a lot over the past 6 years or so since I bought my first DSLR. I bought it to shoot my son's indoor basketball. I bought a used T2i body only in great shape for $200. I when through a number of lens with little success (high school gym lighting and fast moving kids). After reading up and watching some videos, I decided on getting a Sigma 17 - 50 f2.8. All of the sudden, I was getting good stop action shots shooting in AV mode. Over the years I've paid more attention to the type of lighting in gyms, watching my light meter, shooting a stop down in manual / RAW and doing more post work.
I feel I'm doing everything I can with this camera given the conditions, but hitting the ISO ceiling

So what is the next body? I've been looking at 7DmII mainly because of the faster focusing and FPS. Is the ISO high enough?
Here is a sample of what I'm having problems with.

pixmedic · Jul 8, 2017

what ISO was this shot at? did you do any noise reduction on it?
here it is cleaned up a little in lightroom.
budget wise for sports, the 7D or 7DII are probably your best bets. ive seen a lot of good results with those cameras when paired with good glass.

Peeb · Jul 8, 2017

I don't live in the canon ecosystem but I agree with you that sticking with your existing glass is wise.

TallDude · Jul 8, 2017

Here are the spec's in the 'old' editing software I have. With LED lighting in some gyms now, I'm able too shoot f3.5 - 750 @ 1600. Usually I'm stuck with f2.8 - 500 @1600. ISO 800 doesn't cut it. ISO 3200 on the T2i is really noisy. This photo has been lightened up. I'm including a sample RAW.

TallDude · Jul 8, 2017

I didn't do any NR on these photos. I'm always on the fence about the sharpness that's lost with NR. Grain vs lost edges?

Overread · Jul 8, 2017

The 7DMII will likely give you FAR improved AF performance and some gain in ISO however you're already shooting at what I'd consider very tame ISOs for indoor sports. As such I'd spend some time learning about noise reduction and sharpening - its a huge area with a lot of various methods and approaches but the net result is that even light noise reduction can really help a lot; a little sharpening after and you can get some really fantastic results.

If you're underexposing that's also another are to consider; with digital sensors* its best to expose so that you gather as much light as possible and then work from there. If you're brightening things up you're actually increasing noise levels more so than if you'd have used a higher ISO at the time.

Thus I'd say a few adjustments to your method might help out a lot.

That said a 7D MII would be a good solid choice; giving you improvements in pretty much all sectors. Sadly the possible 7DMIII is likely a long long way off as yet so no chance of any lowering of the 7DMII prices.

You could consider fullframe; the 5DMIII and higher level bodies will give you much much better noise control; and with the MII and higher bodies the 5D line got AF systems as good as those in the 7D (the 5D1 and 2 had much simpler systems). Of course you lose the cropfactor and that might also be a problem for your current lenses if they are crop sensor only.

Finally you might consider a 70-200mm. Your current lens appears to be doing well but I'm not sure how much cropping you're doing. A top end lens like an f2.8 version would give you the light gathering you need and let you be closer to the action. In time you might well use two bodies; one with each lens on; to let you switch and swap as you need (even if you end up only using one for team shots and such its handy to not have to keep switching lenses).

*Some newer sony and nikon sensors are beating this trend with allowing a lot of data recovery from underexposed areas without the noise increase.

TallDude · Jul 8, 2017

I'm sure there is a little more room before I truly hit the ceiling. I'll give the 3200 ISO another try. I'm thinking about taking a Lightroom class as well. I usually like yesterdays technology at a bargain, given it was the best then. So the 7D mark I is looking good price wise. I think I'll stay in the crop frame world. My good lenses are for crop.

Overread · Jul 8, 2017

Having shot indoor spots (showjumping) I'd err toward the MII if possible; just for that little bit of extra usable ISO range. I have had the 7D right at its upper limit several times; granted showjumping tends to be very poorly lit indoors, but still I'd aim to get every bit I could.

That said if you can only afford the 7D it will certainly be a big step up for you from your current camera in overall performance.

jcdeboever · Jul 8, 2017

Full frame, sports action camera, fast glass. That's what you need. I am not a Canon guy, maybe a refurbished or used full frame. You seem focused on noise, full frame will help you. Maybe a 5d Mark 3 ?
EOS 5D Mark III

TallDude · Jul 8, 2017

The 5D m3 is about $500 more than the 7D m2. Then I have to buy new glass.... That's a bigger jump than I was considering. A few pro sports photographers that are friends of mine, still at times shoot with their crop frames.

TCampbell · Jul 13, 2017

I'd suggest you rent (e.g. LensRentals.com, BorrlowLenses.com, etc.) a 7D II and a 5D III ... and compare them by shooting a game. You may even have a local camera shop that would rent gear. That will help you decide and you won't have buyer's remorse. I suspect you'll be quite happy with the 7D II... technically a 5D III will outperform at high ISO.

As for noise... I use this software less and less (since my 5D III and 5D IV shoot clean enough that I seldom need it) but my favorite software for dealing with noise was a photoshop plug-in called Noiseware Pro by Imagenomic. The reason I like this particular noise reduction software is because I can adjust how aggressive it will de-noise the image based on tonality. You'll typically see heavier noise in darker areas... and much less noise in lighter areas. The software lets me analyze the noise (and it'll auto-apply an adjustment) but then I can go in to the controls and adjust the noise by tonality so that I don't apply too much de-noising in areas that don't really need it (if you apply too much de-noise then skin starts to look like plastic.)

Another piece of software is Nik Define 2. The Nik collection is now free. You can download and install it (it also comes as a Photoshop plug-in) then use Define to analyze and apply noise reduction. Define lets you drop small boxes to make it sample noise in various areas and it also applies some auto-reduction... which you can also tune. BUT... another cool feature of Define is that you can also use a "brush" option. This actually creates a new photoshop noise reduction layer with a layer mask and you use a "brush" to brush-out the noise where you think it's a problem ... rather than just applying some global reduction across the whole image.

One nice thing about the "brush" choice is that noise reduction tends to soften edges... so this would let you "brush" on the noise reduction in the trouble spots... but stay away from the edges where you want to maintain good detail.

There's also a way to do this with just Photoshop alone (no plug-ins -- but requires Photoshop CC ... my older versions can't do it). This involves duplicating the background layer, aggressively de-noising that layer, but then creating a mask on that layer so that not all of the de-noising is applied. You can then do an "Image" -> "Apply Image" (but tick the "invert" box) and this creates what looks like a black & white negative of your photo in the mask. The reason that's cool is because if an area of a mask is "white" then any change made in that layer is fully applied. If an area of a mask is "black" then none of it is applied. But if an area is "grey" then it is partially applied depending on how dark or light the gray is. The effect is that this causes aggressive noise reduction in the darks (where the noise is always the worst) and little to no noise reduction in the lights (where noise typically isn't visible.) You can also "brush" selective parts of the mask darker or lighter to increase or decrease noise in that area with more control.

TallDude · Jul 13, 2017

Thanks' everyone for your responses. I do have a fairly local shop that rents everything pro that one could need. One of my friends rents a f2.8 70-200 from them when she needs it. I'm definitely leaning towards the 7D mII. I prefer shooting in manual 95% of the time. My new frontier is going to be learning Photoshop / Lightroom. I can get the CC version pretty cheap as a college instructor. In the old days, I spent a good deal of time in a darkroom dodging and masking. I understand the layers in PS, and the brushing selective areas concept I get. Hopefully it won't be a huge learning curve.

weepete · Jul 14, 2017

renting a few different bodies to try them out probably the way to go. The 7dmkii is a good camera, but it's quite far on in it's lifecycle (canon seem to be bringing out new models on a 5 year lifecycle). I'd also consider the 80D which has a newer sensor and better high ISO performance though slightly less FPS.

zombiesniper · Jul 14, 2017

The 7D MK2 wil do quite well in those lighting conditions. You can get clean shots past ISO 6000. Example below. If you don't need the 10fps and would like to get close with 7fps and better ISO than the 7D MK 2 I would suggest the 80d. It is a newer sensor and it's auto focus system is as good as the 7D mk 2 with few less focus points.

Below is at ISO 5000

Barred by Trevor Baldwin, on Flickr