low light shooting tip?

dynasty

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i need some help taking pictures in some low lighting area. includes night time AND indoor. i'm a photographer for my youth group community and we do a lot of camping trips. i would like to take some pictures from the fire camp. what settings/mode would you put for dark area? i also have a flash which i just recently order some defuser for it. i also have a tripod but i wouldn't need it if i use my flash. other than that, any tips?
 

finch13

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A tripod won't do sh!t for movement in low light, it's still going to blurry. Either bump up the ISO, use the largest possible aperture (smallest f/stop number) on your lens, or get a faster lens (bigger max. aperture). The on-camera flash should be fine for the pictures, if you bring the ISO up to 400 or 800, the fire may give off enough light where you can use a shutter speed higher than 1/60 and no flash at all.

Also, if you're using a zoom lens, try to get closer to the subject instead of zooming in on them. Unless you have a really expensive constant-aperture zoom, the more you increase the focal length (zoom) the lens has to use a smaller aperture, i.e. on my 28-300mm, at 28mm I can use f/3.5, but at 300mm I can only go as big as f/5.6, make sense?
 

dynasty

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sweet. i also noticed when i actually up close to the subject rather than zoom, it's less blurry. i tried setting the ISO to 400 but it's dark. i'll keep practicing with taking random objects in my room and see how it goes. thanks.

question! is the zoom image stabilizer lenses work better than prime lenses or no? all my lenses is just EF mount. -_-
 

finch13

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Think of zoom like shooting a rifle. The closer the target, the easier it is to hit, even if you arms are swaying a bit. Now think of a target that's 100 yds away, any small movement in your body position could cause the bullet to miss the target completely. It's the same with zoom, when you have a short focal length they're sharp, when you extend the zoom all the way, any movement can cause noticeable fuzziness. A good rule of thumb is the minimum shutter speed you can use is 1 over your focal length. I'll use my 28-300mm as an example again. At a 28mm focal length (wide angle) my minimum shutter speed I could use would be 1/28 (realistically 1/30 since 1/28 doesn't exist) and at 300mm focal length (zoomed all the way in) my minimum shutter speed would be 1/300 (realistically 1/320 since my cam doesn't do 1/300).

When dark rooms will almost always need a tripod, if you were in a room that had maybe a single lamp on, like a 60W bulb, 400 should work, if not, step up to 800. You should be shooting with the biggest aperture you can (smallest f/stop number), I'll assume you're using an 18-55 kit lens, just to be broad, and that should be as wide as possible (18mm) and a shutter speed of 1/20. Adjust your ISO as low as you can, while still being able to properly expose the shadows (or at least the lowlights) of the composition.

IS lens have moveable lens groups that moves with the shaking of the lens and also have accelerometers, thus adding to their cost. Canon IS and Nikon VR can compensate for shaking four stops better than non-IS/VR lenses. Take the "1 over focal length example" on a 50mm prime lens (non-zooming/fixed focal length). The slowest shutter you could use without a tripod and not get blur would be 1/50 (1/60 realistically), on an IS lens you could shoot the same shot with 1/4 and using a smaller aperture to get more of the frame in focus (less depth of field).

EF and EF-S. You can use both types of lens if you're shooting with a Rebel (I think you are, I can't remember). EF lenses can be used on 35mm, full frame digital, and APS-C digital (Rebel), while EF-S lenses can only be used on APS-C cameras because EF-S lenses move the rear element closer to the image sensor (the -S stands for short back focus). If an EF-S lens is used on 35mm of full frame digitals it can cause vignetting (similar to my signature V).

So to answer your question about IS/VR in zoom vs. prime, it shouldn't really matter. Zoom lenses have a range of focal lengths (28-300mm for example), while a prime is stuck at one focal length (50mm). Prime lenses are often much cheaper and have larger apertures (see Canon 50mm f/1.2L vs. my Tamron 28-300mm which has a maximum aperture of f/4 at the same focal length (50mm)).

Hope this helps clear some things up, but I may have confused you more in the process.
 

ryan s

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yeah...if it were me, id take out my 16/2.8, 28/2.5, and 55/1.4 for the low light.

the most difficult thing will be balancing the fire with the people...since the fire is bright, the people will be silhouettes...

idk if your cam has "rear curtain sync" in the menu anywhere (my 300d with 10d firmware did), you can use a faster shutter speed for the fire, then the flash will only go off at the end of the exposure. check this out, and it should give you an idea of what it can look like.
 

finch13

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The 300D doesn't have any sort of curtain sync, that's a custom function and it is in the 10D firmwarez, i haz it.

Too long of a shutter speed and flash won't have any effect. Unless you flash multiple times, but that's hard to do with people.
 

dynasty

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wow thanks. learned a lot. i mostly take pictures outdoor when the sun is out but never really know how to adjust my settings to take pictures at night. only thing is i use a flash or tripod. lame, i know. haha. i might plan to buy some prime lenses in the future. btw, i have a Canon 30D.
 
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