noise or under exposure

I have a dilema. When taking pictures at a basketball game, I shoot at ISO 1600 and was using the Sigma 17-70 2.8. This year, I will be trying the 77mm 1.8 pancake lens. Should I shoot at ISO 1600 and deal with the noise or shot at ISO 200 or 400 and deal with the exposure? I can also use a flash but the flash must work at 1/400 or moe.

Small correction: The the 77 LTD isn't considered a pancake lens. It's small compared to your 17-70 zoom, but the title "pancake" refers to the DA LTD's.(21, 40 and 70.)

About the noise:
IMO it's better to have a noisy sharp picture than a noise free blurred one. Not sure if the players would appreciate flash, that much.

Hope it helps, and have fun at the game.

Martin.

Use whatever produces a sharp image. Higher ISO will allow for a faster shutter speed, you can deal with shadow noise later.

If both camera body and flash support High Speed Synch (HSS) you can set the shutter speed to whatever you wish, right up to the fastest shutter speed I believe.

Thanks for the input. I think I will deal with the noise. As for (HSS), the K10 has a setting of 180. Not sure If I can use flash in other setings though. I will be using Neat Image to deal with noise.

The flash synch speed of the K10D is 1/180th or lower when using a normal flash in normal mode.

The K10D can use the HSS capability of both the AF360FGZ and AF540FGZ flashes and when appropriately set you can use them together at any shutter speed above 1/180th.

In HSS mode you get a number of bursts of flash to totally expose the frame.

Matt explained it very well recently, search for the topic with his reply.

There is no point in under-exposing to avoid high iso as "pushing" the exposure up in post-processing will end up with greater & more uneven noise being introduced, maybe even some banding too.

I assume you shoot in RAW as noise can be more effectively controlled in the RAW converter. I use K10s which I believe are 'noisier' than either the K20 or K-7 but I've shot at up to 1600 ISO.
I couldn't agree more with Martin when he says it's better to have a sharp noisy picture than a blurry one which is less noisy. Noise, or grain, can often add to the effect of action in a sports picture.
david

You can sort of have your cake and eat it!

This is a the same section of a 100% view of a .dng file on my GX20, (quite a large pullup, in fact). One is 'native', ie 1600iso with untreated noise.
The other has been run through Neat Image on its default, 'remove noise and sharpen' setting.

Even before Neat Image, I'd have been glad to get such good results froma 1600iso film!

An interesting sidelight, both files are saved at 100% jpg quality - the untreated one comes in at 200k, the treated one at 127k.

I have seen cleverer people than me get excellent results with PS noise removal but personally I find the dedicated software faster to use and more effective.