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How do you guys who shoot sports at night handle the conditions? It seems that either I get quite a lot of grain, or if I attack the photo with noise ninja, it ends up looking artificial (example here).

These ones were shot during the reserves game, at ISO 1100, 1/400, f/2.8





Full gallery here - http://losfp.smugmug.com/gallery/2939769

I consciously decided that I would not use any noise reduction OR sharpening, just levels and WB, so that I wouldn't end up with the fake plastic look that over-use of NR gives you. What do you all think - acceptable or not? I guess they are not really portfolio quality, but I've seen worse on the back page of papers

They look good to me. You've captured some good action here. I can't really tell how noisy they are from these sizes, but i can understand you don't want to sharpen to keep the grain as low as possible.

Colour and exposure looks good though.

When i shoot racing at night i never want to go above iso 400, but once i look at the histogram i realize i have no choice and end up having to use 1000 or 1250, but if i nail the exposure it can look ok.

I think the shot you used NoiseNinja on looks great, not too artificial for me. But if you're not happy with it, try playing with the settings and getting a balance of less grain and natural.

Unfortunately you will have to live with the noise, unless you get a Canon 1Dmk2 thingy. If you nail the exposure, the noise will be more forgiving.

Slight overexposure will be easier to recover than underexposure, which will give more noise after you've post-processed it a bit.

Alternatively, a VR lens will help if you're not already using one.

Canon's are generally better with noise but will soften an image a bit more than a Nikon, which is sharper but has more noise. It's all a compromise between noise and clarity.

Maybe a try with a Fuji S5 might be in order.

Now try that with a D2H then tell me YOU'VE got noise issues.

Thanks for the feedback guys

The noise is really only a problem in the dark backgrounds, or if you are pixel peeping. At web resolutions, or I reckon even in print, the problem is not so great. I guess the old saying is true - better a noisy, sharp image than a noiseless, blurry one