[Soap]

I dont have much to work with, but I CAN sit close. The student section is right under the west goal. I am going to start with ISO1600 because I can kill enough noise in after-processing to make it look decent in a 4x6 or 5x7 print...but if for some reason I need to kick it up to 3200, is there any good FREE software out there that can kick noise in the butt without destroying the image detail?

The area is fairly bright compared to a lot of arenas. It has the same lighting as most pro courts, but the ceiling is much closer to the floor. I haven't shot basketball before, but I'm sure I can handle it as long as I get acceptable results after knocking the noise down.

Any suggestions for software?

[ApparentlyNothing]

Well, getting up to 3200 ISO with digital, unless you're using a cam that's really good with low noise levels, even in post it's going to be hard to really save the photo. You could probably bring the color noise down quite a bit, but the way digital captures such high ISO images, even with no color noise, things look pretty awful.

But you gotta do what you gotta do. And a noisy image is better than a blurry one. One possible option is to download Lightroom and just do the free trial since it's pretty decent at getting rid of noise. You could even download the Lightroom Beta 3 which is supposed to be even better at color noise reduction and be able to use it for a few months before it expires, though they don't recommend using the beta for important work.

[RipVanWinkle]

How'd this go?

[Soap]

The front seats were reserved for that game. Couldn't do anything.