Low Light Shooting

Outdoors in the day is decently easy, just before shooting I take a few test shots to see what aperture and exposure give me the good lighted shots but I'm usually shooting something moving so what also gives no blur. I really like depth of field I do a lot of cars, runners, stuff like that, even landscapes I want to emphasize something and make it dramatic by blurring everything else so really after I find what exposure works for no blur I back the F stop pretty far down and I get as low on the ISO as I can as I find that makes for sharper shots. Am I going about this correctly?

Indoors, in comparatively poor lighting, I have to go so wide open on the shutter speed that it blurs everything. So trying to take shots of my dog ends up mostly like this. Using lens 1 in my sig.

http://i688.photobucket.com/albums/v...w/IMG_5282.jpg

Playing around, she's moving too fast for my shutter speed, and the shutter speed is letting too little light in. I fail EPICALLY at flash. Everything is blue. I try changing the white balance and it gets better, but near ground is super white and far ground is dark. I think it has to due with the stock camera-mounted flash, but regardless I want to get a grasp on the ten million things I have going on before worrying about flash.

More problems. Start out quick exposure at slot car racing, indoors low light, get this.

http://i688.photobucket.com/albums/v...w/IMG_5177.jpg


Open up the shutter speed and sacrifice some ISO and get not bad.

http://i688.photobucket.com/albums/v...w/IMG_5193.jpg

But when you try that on point and shoot normal action you get a lot of results like this.

http://i688.photobucket.com/albums/v...w/IMG_5269.jpg


Play around enough and if you're creative you can get some good angles/shots. But you are really pushing it. On the border of too dark. On the border of too grainy, I really don't like ISO1600 on this camera it seems it is always grainy. Even ISO800 is a crap shoot. Even then you get shots like this. Pretty cool, but God forbid I need something more than F5.6 I'm screwed.

http://i688.photobucket.com/albums/v...w/IMG_5241.jpg


So on to shooting of my new puppy. I know my house is low light. I know I suck. I know my camera and on-camera flash sucks. I turn on every light in the room, disturbing the puppy, then wait for it to go back to how it was 30 minutes later. Take a pic of the white wall, custom white balance. Turn on the flash, take off the hood so you don't get that weird ring where the flash hits the hood and makes a shadow in your pic with a camera-mounted flash. I'm only focusing on the dog so I can crank the F stop all the way down. Keep shooting in the fastest exposure possibly to get the least blurry because she is moving a bit. Crank the ISO down as far as it will go and not blurr.

http://i688.photobucket.com/albums/v...w/IMG_5401.jpg

To me, I love that photo. I don't know if it's a contest winner or whatever, but it makes me smile. I actually darkened that post -.67. I like it...it's my style. I'm sure there are ways to improve it, but it's just...me...as a photographer. I did crop it, very slightly, in 3:2.

So, my blanket, impossible-to-answer question is:
Is it the photographer, the camera, the flash, or the lens? I'd like to do this type non-flash. Of the photos you see here, those are a couple out of a thousand. Literally. I got 3-4 exposures of these two days that were usable. Too dark out of the camera renders completely unusable. Grainy when you do the post-add-light correction. Like, bad enough you don't post on FaceBook. I have heard L glass is better in the low light. As is either a 430EXII speed lite flash or a 580exII speed lite. I'd really like to do this type of work without flash because, as another racer, I would NEVER even think of setting a flash off during a heat, that's just plain disrespectful. Also the number of exposures you can take without flash is a lot higher not waiting for that reload. And even on a good day I'll take a few thousand photographs of a car and have two or three that I like. Please tell me an L glass is the solution to all problems, it will make me a good photographer instantly, sex with my wife better, and my beer colder. But the beer before sex, of course.


/end ramble.
I'm a lost cause.
Time to sign up for ANOTHER class.
LOL.

What you need is a faster lens. One with a wider aperture.
A 50mm f/1.8 costs about a hundred bucks. A f/1.4 at about 350 to 400 and a 1.2 is over a grand.
Most of us get by with a 1.8. You'll get faster shutter speeds and/or less depth of field and be able to use lower iso.
Check this thread to see what some are doing with their 50s. http://forums.photographyreview.com/...highlight=50mm

No matter what camera make, it is the cheapest prime lens you can get.

You can also consider a used manual focus lens with the right adapter. There f1.4 and 1.8 out there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frog

What you need is a faster lens. One with a wider aperture.
A 50mm f/1.8 costs about a hundred bucks. A f/1.4 at about 350 to 400 and a 1.2 is over a grand.
Most of us get by with a 1.8. You'll get faster shutter speeds and/or less depth of field and be able to use lower iso.
Check this thread to see what some are doing with their 50s. http://forums.photographyreview.com/...highlight=50mm

No matter what camera make, it is the cheapest prime lens you can get.

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So with a prime I literally need to walk closer or farther from my subject as opposed to rotating the barrel?

^Yup. The 50mm 1.8 will let a lot more light in, but if your in a tight spot, you might not be able to back up enough to get your picture in the frame. I know Canon makes a 17-55 mm 2.8, but its alot more then the $100 you'll spend on the 50mm 1.8.

For the portraits, I noticed you never really brought your shutter speed below 1/60th. With the IS on the kit lens, I can typical use a shutter speed of 1/15 without any problems, which will allow you to lower your iso. On the 2 pictures of the girl, your shutter speed was 1/200, thats why you needed an iso of 800, but on the second shot you lowered it to 1/60 and still kept the iso at 800. You probably could have gotten away with 400 if your dropped the shutter speed below 1/60.

Yeah I definitely did notice a relationship between either lowering the ISO or the shutter speed would be less light and raising the ISO or shutter speed would be more light I am constantly playing around with the both of them, trying to get the best compromise of good ISO and quick enough shutter for what I am using.

Often I find a setting that works and stick with it, I don't change up much during an activity. Would possibly leaving the ISO on Auto and taking one variable out of the equation raise my chances of success as I could pick the shutter speed and F stop I desired and the ISO would be Auto, or like most things Auto would this usually result in poor "computerized" choices and poor results?

Holy giant image sizes Batman. I thought I had my Photobucket to default 800x600. Fixed that.

There are absolutely no post production changes at all to any of the first five shots. I know they all blow chunks, bad. I was just using shots from the last set that I thought illustrated my point. A darkening (surprise), a change of white balance and color settings, a sharpness, and a crop to the last dog picture. That one I would classify as 8/10. The last shot of Jonathan I might do some editing with, that could be a decent shot with some work.

My wife wants to kill me for every picture I post of her, ever. I'm sure if she saw these two, even just using them as an example, I'd be really dead.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 95PGTTech

So with a prime I literally need to walk closer or farther from my subject as opposed to rotating the barrel?

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Yes! If you feel you have to be too close you can also crop the picture later.
With a prime, you will get sharper pictures.

You can also get primes in the 70 to 100 +/- with f/2.8. If you get those with IS, you should be able to get some decent shots, I would think but remember that I'm not an expert.
I know many sports shooters use a 70-200 f/2.8 and get good indoor,(think basketball), shots. You are then talking $$$$$$$$ though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 95PGTTech

So with a prime I literally need to walk closer or farther from my subject as opposed to rotating the barrel?

---

Yes! If you feel you have to be too close you can also crop the picture later.
With a prime, you will get sharper pictures.
The 1/15 that Jay mentions is totally possible IF you are shooting still subjects.
Motion of any kind at that speed will give blur.

You can also get primes in the 70 to 100 +/- with f/2.8. If you get those with IS, you should be able to get some decent shots, I would think but remember that I'm not an expert.
I know many sports shooters use a 70-200 f/2.8 and get good indoor,(think basketball), shots. You are then talking $$$$$$$$ though.

All pics are now 800x600.