Grainy digital images
 

After a suggestion from yelvertoft, here goes;

I'm getting what I consider to be grainy images from my new Canon 450D SLR, is it just me or am I getting something wrong?

I use a EF 75-300mm lens, sorry I can't remember all the other technical details as I took these photos using the sports setting on the camera, the one thing I do know is that the longer the focal length, the worse it gets.

The first image 01 025, I was reasonably close and for the most part this image looks OK

Image 01 088 I'm a bit further away and in my eyes there is grain appearing.

Finally Ian (our reserves team manager), this is a crop of a long distance shot of him at the full 300mm and it looks awful!

Is all of this down to the pixels or is there something I can do to help prevent this from appearing?

All thoughts most welcome

Trevor to me its looks like motion blur but need a bit more information on what ISO, f stop and shutter speed you took them at, there is no exif data for me to check out.

No1 has some motion blur, but there are focussed bits in the image, and it doesnt intrude. No2 nothing is quite in focuss - not sure if this is a ocus issue or camera shake. No3 some camera shake, but also some pixelation evident - perhaps because of the crop.
EXIf would help a lot to help us help you.

OK, I've found the exif details, I didn't know it was downloaded along with the image :rolleyes:

Image 01 025
f/4.5
Exposure 1/200
ISO-400
Focal length 135mm

Image 01 088
f/5.6
Exposure 1/160
ISO-800
Focal length 300mm

The original of the Ian crop is the same as image 01 088

Image blur is something I notice I have on a lot of these action photos, something I plan to practice. I have also bought a monopod as a tripod is far to cumbersome at games, perhaps this will help with motion blur

Reading the exif data , I would say the speed at 1/200s and 1/160s is far to slow for action shots you need a minimum speed of 1/500s. If you can't get that speed then keep going up with the ISO, you will get more noise at higher ISO but that can be corrected in a good noise reducing program. With plenty of practice with higher speeds and good technique you will have more keepers.

OK Thanks Saphire, as I've already mentioned besides it being a new image format for me the kind of photography is also unexplored territory. Plenty to learn and practice I think

At least I'm not wasting rolls of film in the process :)

Right! The last hour has been very interesting thanks to the above pointers.

Instead of using the camera basic feature for sports I've been playing about with the Tv and it's settings. Already much better images coming through though I've only been shooting the traffic coming along our road (they must think I'm an undercover traffic cop because they've all been slowing down as they near me :D)

Still much to learn but I can already see vast improvements, thank you

That's the joy of digital Trevor. With your camera, dont be afraid of pushing the ISO to allwo a quick enough shutter speed - you should be getting quite acceptable results all the way up to ISO800.

You appear to have focused on thew wall behind Ian, which doesn't help. The primary reason for Ian looking so awful (I mean this strictly in the photographic sense) is because he is moving. As Christine (Saphire) says, you need to bump up the shutter speed to freeze the motion. You can do this by upping the ISO as has already been suggested, or opening up the aperture unless you're already wide open with the lens you have used (which I think is the case here).

Duncan

In the twilight hour that I had a play this afternoon, I just adjusted the shutter speed, varying from 1/250 right through to 1/800, setting the camera to auto detect the ISO and had much better results in fairly low light compared to the images above which were taken in much better, though still low, light conditions.

I have Wednesday pretty much to myself and as long as there is nothing my wife needs me to do I might just get out there and play some more, this time using different ISO setting as well..

The other feature I'm trying to get used to and this is why Ian's picture possibly looks so poor, is the spot auto focusing, I'm not used to it on any of my old 35mm cameras and have really just been trying to get used to these new features.

Time and practice!