advice needed on low light events

Chrissiebeez_NL

hi fellow Dgrinners!

i'm currently shooting a monthly event called 'pecha kucha night' in Rotterdam and sometimes in Amsterdam. Although i slowly get better at shooting this event the keeper rate is low so i thought that maybe someone has a tip for me i havent thought about.

photos i made during different events can be found here:

link to website:

the first photos are the latests additions and the last photos are the oldest.

The event is pretty dark, and i'm not allowed to use my flash. i use a canon 50mm 1.8 for the portraits and close ups of audience and get about 1/20 to 1/40 sec. exposuretime at ISO 1600 and f/1.8 depending on the brightness of the slides being presented .

I use a sigma 10-20 4-5.6 for the overviews and get anywhere from 1/4 to 1 second of exposuretime depending on the depth of field.

i use a (dodgy) tripod but this can be hard to manouvre around with through the crowded hall and at strange angles so i leave it sometimes and walk around with the 50 shooting people. the wide angel lens rarely leaves the tripod. i use a remote shutter for most of the shots.

any tips would be much appreciated because i could try them out and get more keepers. :rolleyes

cyberdos

I don't have much advise to give but I did read alot of good tips here.

hope that helps.

urbanaries

A monopod and a faster lens come to mind.

SloYerRoll

or VR/IS

LiquidAir

SloYerRoll wrote:

or VR/IS

If your subjects are often sitting still enough for a 1/8s exposure time, then an f/2.8 VR/IS lens can work. Otherwise, fast primes are the way to go. Personally, my favorite lens when things get really dark is the 35/1.4 because I can reliably get reasonably sharp images hand holding it at f/1.4 and 1/30s. At 50mm or longer, either using a monopod or bracing yourself is likely to be give you a better hit ratio than the slower shutter speed of an f/2.8 IS lens.

Under some circumstances, deliberately underexposing the shot is preferable to blur due to subject motion. In those conditions, I use shutter priority with the slowest speed I can tolerate and turn off the safety shift feature so the shot will underexpose when I hit the aperture limit.

jfriend

Chrissiebeez_NL wrote:

hi fellow Dgrinners!

i'm currently shooting a monthly event called 'pecha kucha night' in Rotterdam and sometimes in Amsterdam. Although i slowly get better at shooting this event the keeper rate is low so i thought that maybe someone has a tip for me i havent thought about.

photos i made during different events can be found here:

link to website:

the first photos are the latests additions and the last photos are the oldest.

The event is pretty dark, and i'm not allowed to use my flash. i use a canon 50mm 1.8 for the portraits and close ups of audience and get about 1/20 to 1/40 sec. exposuretime at ISO 1600 and f/1.8 depending on the brightness of the slides being presented .

I use a sigma 10-20 4-5.6 for the overviews and get anywhere from 1/4 to 1 second of exposuretime depending on the depth of field.

i use a (dodgy) tripod but this can be hard to manouvre around with through the crowded hall and at strange angles so i leave it sometimes and walk around with the 50 shooting people. the wide angel lens rarely leaves the tripod. i use a remote shutter for most of the shots.

any tips would be much appreciated because i could try them out and get more keepers.

Boy, there isn't much light and it's highly colored. The other advice in this thread of a monopod could definitely help with the slow shutter speeds.

I could add a couple things: If you want to neutralize the really strong red lighting, then you might want to either shoot RAW or set a custom white balance in the camera. RAW will give you a little more data to work with when making large white balance adjustments. A custom white balance in the camera will give you a better exposure for the red lighting and make your histogram more accurate. It might even be the case that a color filter that would block some of the red light would help you get a more color balanced shot, though losing even more light isn't great.

The only other thing I might suggest is to shoot RAW and use what I call the max "exposure possible method". When I'm in a really low light venue and will be happy to get basically any keepers I can, I sometimes use this method. If there was enough light for regular metering, that's probably what I would use, but if regular metering results in a shutter speed that is too slow to produce keepers, then the next best choice is to go with a shutter speed that could produce a decent image and just underexpose, correcting it in RAW development later (accepting some more noise):

• Shoot RAW because there's more of an ability to correct the image after the fact
• Set the camera to manual (no automatic exposure)
• Set ISO to the highest you can and still get decent shots for your camera
• Set EV to 0 (no point in any exposure compensation)
• Set the slowest shutter speed that I think can work with my shooting conditions (1/30, 1/15, etc... usually something in that neighborhood both because of hand holding and because of subject movement)
• Open the aperture all the way
• When shooting, keep an eye out for any conditions where this would be too much light and either manually raise the shutter speed or flip back to aperture mode if that's the case (the camera will increase the shutter speed then)
• Focus on situations where the subject is either very still or where the motion that there is will work artistically
• Take my pictures, knowing many will will be underexposed
• Adjust them in a good RAW processor to correct for the underexposure and the white balance

Here are four images I took this way. I was at a nightime show and all I had with me with my D2X and 18-200 VR (which is f/5.6 at the long end). I set it to ISO 800, max aperture and a shutter speed around 1/20 (except for the fireball shot which is 1/4 s). These resulted in shots that were 1-2 stops underexposed that I pulled up in Adobe Camera RAW. Now, these aren't technically great shots, but they are probably the best shots possible with the equipment I had and the available lighting which is all I was trying to do.

Keep in mind that, when shooting RAW, there isn't much difference between doubling your ISO and shooting one stop underexposed. Both give the sensor the same amount of light. One does a "push" in the camera, the other does a "push" in your RAW processor. When going 1-1.5 stops, the results usually aren't that different on the Nikon's that I've seen (though it can vary from one camera to another).

Here are a few from a Mayan show in Mexico (the first is at 1/4s and shot through a net, the others are 1/20 or 1/25):

Chrissiebeez_NL

wow, thanks for all the fast replies!

i will make sure to try all of the tips. And a monopod wouldnt be such a bad thing either, and would sure make manouvring around a lot easier!

if any more tips come bubbling up, let me know!

pathfinder

The new Nikons with ISO s 12000 and ~25000 are going to revolutionize night shooting once again, kind of like Canon did several years ago.

I have seen Nikon prints at ISO 25600( or thereabouts) and they are truly lovely at 16 x 24 inches. This sentiment is coming from a white lens shooter, who may look at the new Nikon very carefully.

Dave Clee

Definitely great tips in this thread....I looked at your pics and expected worse. For those conditions I think you did a pretty good job. Someone already suggested to shoot RAW and I think this is real good advice..
But overall I think no matter what you are going to have more throw aways than keepers in this kind of situation.
After trying the new Nikon D3 and seeing what that thing can do at ISO 1600, 3200 and 6400, well its real obvious the future of low light shooting is upon us..

Cheers

Dave