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Low Light Tips


Lollipup
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I'd like to learn the best settings for low light photos so I can take decent shots at my training classes. They are held in a school undercover area with crappy lighting. I took my first full manual mode shots tonight and at least you can see the photos but they are quite noisy. I'd like to find the best settings for this area and save it as a preset.

This is the area

flat,550x550,075,f.jpg

F - 1.4

shutter speed 1/160

ISO 6400

no flash. 50mm lens

flat,550x550,075,f.jpg

F - 1.4

shutter speed 1/100

ISO 3200

no flash. 50mm lens

Edited by Lollipup
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Can you post the exif data? how high did you have your iso, I went to the bowling alley tonight and talk about tough light, flashing lights from games and lights down the alleys not to mention the shiney lanes. :laugh: Im about to have a look at the pictures and hoping I got a few decent shots. I think bumping up the iso is the biggest thing you need to do if you don't want to use a flash. Im sure others will be along with other tips. At the bowling Alley I shot on Av mode (Aperture priority) and there was a couple of M shots I took just to experiment, I shot an old light up church on my way home and I can't wait to see how they turned out!

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Sometimes, it is simply too dark. You are pushing your camera to its limits (which is fine, I do it all the time). But there's not much further you can push it without flash.

What about the built in flash? I actually don't know how I managed not to set it on :o

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If your shooting in Manual your flash won't pop up there should be a little button on the left side of the flash to open it manually. If you are shooting in Auto the flash will automatically pop up in low light. I have been practicing hard now to use flash indoors, I don't like it much and one of my dogs in particular if I shoot him with flash he always has his eyes closed and doesn't like it.

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Thanks Huga, TLC & Snook for your comments.

Snook, I train there every week and its my business so it would be good to have decent shots to put on the FB page and website. Looks like I'll have to add a flash to my list of camera wants.

If I use the built in flash and get the point and shoot look, would you expect them to be better quality than a regular point and shoot camera? Shutter speed is a lot quicker than my old camera so that's one plus with moving dogs.

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noise is sadly the tradeoff for pushing the ISO to its limits, esp with the non-pro SLR cameras. Exposure must also be exactly spot on otherwise more noise will be added when adjusting it in your editing software. Looking at the EXIF< not a lot more that you could have done here, as you couldn't open wider, reduce shutter (or risk images getting OOF), or go higher with ISO (or noise may have been even worse), so agree that you may need to add a flash.

2 tips (one of which looks like you are already doing anyway - don;t go for an inbetween ISO, stick to the main ones - like 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400 etc - the inbetween ones are not actual ISO but extrapolations based on the lower ISO and adjust, and do not have the same clarity of information, it is based on the camera guessing the pixel data to adjust), and keep the composition clean and simple. The main thing that shows a snapshot is that lack of thought and care to ensuring the image is clean, simple and no distracting elements to it.

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