Shooting Hockey In Dark Arena Through Dirty Plexiglass

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 17, 2023
3 replies
406 views

Hello,
I photograph a lot of hockey games. These arenas are notoriously DARK by photographic standards. Plus, some arenas have very DIRTY plexiglass which I have to photograph THROUGH. The resulting images are extremely noisy, hazy and flat (please see attached RAW file for an example). All the fixes via Lightroom I can come up with (i.e. Dehaze, Clarity, Luminance) looks overly processed. Anyone have any tips/suggestions on getting something that looks a bit more natural?

Thanks in advance.

David.

FYI: Sony A9, 70-200mm f2.8 on a Mac using LR v 13.

DSC01255-ARW.zip

macOS

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dj_paige

Legend

I shoot some volleyball in arenas that are not well lighted. The new AI Denoise is spectacular. Crank the ISO up as high as you need to, set the shutter speed to 1/400 (or whatever you think you need), shoot the photo and then run it through AI DeNoise. I actually use Auto-ISO in this case. I have shot photos at ISOs > 20,000 and you can't tell they were high ISO shots after running them through DeNoise.

I realize this doesn't address the dirty plexiglass issue...

B

Bill Sprague

Community Expert

Not sure this is as natural as you might want.

There is a relatively new Denoise AI tool in Lightroom Classic. To my eyes that fixed a lot. Then, Auto Color worked pretty well. I adjusted it further with sliders for Exposure, Contrast, Saturation.

Not sure how bright the red in the shirts should be. 87's eyes look good at 100%!

Sean McCormack

Community Expert

Denoise is amazing on files like these. Even better, it'll batch selected images when you run it. Generally I'll batch my final selects this way to optimize the time on them. Nice edit @Bill Sprague !

Sean McCormack. Author of 'Essential Development 3'. Magazine Writer. Former Official Fuji X-Photographer.