Been putting the 70-200VR f/2.8 lens to work lately by shooting my local high school's hockey team. It's a challenge with a Nikon D70 in the lighting conditions of these local rinks. Have learned a lot about post processing noisy, underexposed digital images. Not wanting to give up on action stopping shutter speeds, I used Shutter Priority mode and set to 1/400s. The Nikon 70-200VR gave me an aperture of f/2.8 for all these shots at ISO 1600. 1. Some puck separation by the home team in white. 2. Forward looking to make a play in the offensive zone. 3. Busy visiting team goalie making one of his 40 saves of the night. His team won 2-1. 4. Poke check 5. More checking 6. Swooping in towards the goal. Lighting is far from...well, it's terrible to be honest. If I used Aperture priority mode, I would get shutter speeds in the 1/160 to 1/320 range but opted for a bit of underexposure to stop the action. Used Noise Ninja plugin for Aperture 2 to clean up the images.
Nice work Scott, glad to see you putting the 70-200m thru its paces. So even at f2.8 and ISO1600 it is tough going managing to get enough light in those conditions. I guess a 70-200m f4 lens would not cut it.
Paul, I went to a game on Saturday and did use Aperture priority mode at f/2.8 and ISO 1600.I added the Exif data so you can see how the shutter speed varied based where the action was. Used Noise Ninja for clean up. For this rink it's feasible (the same one as in the first post). Got those histograms moved to the right. Post processing was much easier this time. I'm getting there! 1. 1/160s, EV +1.7 and 88mm FL (Dark end of rink) 2. 1/400s, EV +1.0 and 70mm FL (Bright end of rink) 3. 1/250s, EV +1.3 and 130mm FL
Here's a few more from the last game. B'ville (team in white), my old school, won 4-2. I believe I'm getting the hang of using Aperture's Levels tool. I'll tell you, I've learned more about post processing in the last three weeks then the entire year I've owned Aperture 2. It's helped with all the non-sports photography I do, too! All taken with the Nikon D70/70-200VR f/2.8 combination in aperture priority mode set at f/2.8, ISO 1600 and EV +1.3. Noise Ninja used on all images. 1. 1/250s at 200mm FL 2. 1/200s at 200mm FL (cropped) 3. 1/160s at 200mm FL (cropped) The cropped images are very cropped. Probably pushing the 6MP sensor to the limit (if not beyond). You'll notice blurs at these shutter speeds, too. No games for me this week because of conflicts. Will be at an AHL game this Friday (ah, I'll never complain about the lighting there again!) and a Syracuse University Men's basketball game on Saturday.
Nice work Scott. I went to the AHL game in Providence last Sunday and their policy is as follows: "Small cameras are allowed at our games. You cannot bring any camera with telephoto lenses and there is also no videotaping allowed." (FYI: The policy at Boston Garden is no camera with a removable lens is allowed.) I should have brought my 40D with my 50 1.8 on it, but I didn't want to risk the hassle of being told that camera is not allowed. Do you use Noise Ninja as a plug in to Aperture or as a stand alone? Also, when you process photos with NN, do you usually have to handle each individually, or can you batch process based on the ISO setting you use? I'm thinking of adding NN to my application suite since the 40D can get noisy at higher ISO.
So far noone has bothered me at the War Memorial. I'm very aware not to get in people's way and the ushers haven't said anything to me. I'm surprised Providence is like that for hockey. Now, for concerts I know I would not be allowed in with a dSLR. P&S are fine. Heck, camera phones are coming in at 6MP these days which is what my camera is. At the Carrier Dome, they don't have a policy on cameras. Video taping is not allowed along with a bunch of other stuff. I got the plug-in version of NN for Aperture and it works seamlessly. I use an older Powerbook G4 so it's not as fast as it would be on new Mac hardware. Not bad though. I have a NN profile set up for the D70/70-200VR lens combination. It took time to do but is saving me lots of time. As for batching, I haven't checked to see if it can. I'll check tonight and let you know. I only needed NN when I started shooting high school games because of the bad lighting. At the Crunch and SU games, I'll get good exposures and doubt I'll use NN much even with 800 and 1600 ISO settings.
Thanks, Roger! I am very impressed with the plug-in capabilities of A2. I was worried my hardware wouldn't be good enough but it was fine. Not that I don't want a new Macbook Pro. LOL Need a new camera first.
Paul, As Roger pointed out, it's easy to select multiple images and bring them into Noise Ninja. Once there, you can tweak the settings for each image or use the same profile over all of them. Either way, once you are ready, click the Remove Noise button and NN processes the selected batch. I did a set of six earlier tonight and was impressed at how easy it was to do.
