New to Forum New to Cannon 40d
I just found this forum and read a few posts.
Seems like a very welcoming bunch here. And hopefully very forgiving bunch to a nuby in the digital arena. (me)
In my "side profession" I am exposed to the "night life" of musicians. I have taken many photos over the years using film and I have a "feel" for the settings used in low lighting no flash. I do photograph by the seat of my pants and never really documented camera settigs. (my bad)
The Canon 40D shows promise in taking photos in low light.
I have a simple question (I hope)
What are some of the settings I should be looking at for low light without a flash?
or
What have some of you set your camera at for low light without a flash?
.
Seems like a very welcoming bunch here. And hopefully very forgiving bunch to a nuby in the digital arena. (me)
In my "side profession" I am exposed to the "night life" of musicians. I have taken many photos over the years using film and I have a "feel" for the settings used in low lighting no flash. I do photograph by the seat of my pants and never really documented camera settigs. (my bad)
The Canon 40D shows promise in taking photos in low light.
I have a simple question (I hope)
What are some of the settings I should be looking at for low light without a flash?
or
What have some of you set your camera at for low light without a flash?
.
0
Comments
The main problem is to keep the ISO as low as you can (to minimize noise) while still keeping the shutter fast enough to avoid camera blur. This is mostly dictated by the lens you are using. A faster lens (wider maximum aperture) lets you shoot with a lower ISO.
You might want to look through the One Stop Music Thread. Lots of examples and some shooting tips.
Hope this helps.
I hope to learn a lot here.
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I would put camera in 800 ISO (higher and you start to notice some noise), and buy a very bright lens: 1.4, 1.8 or 2.8 depending on focal length. Also consider an IS lens, which will allow you to go below 1/60th a sec handheld without real worry.
The shutter speed was set to Auto and I did have to wait for the lights to come on. Auotmatic lights in clubs are very anoying when trying to get a good shot.
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When using flash I would switch to Tv mode and use a shutter speed of 1/125. This is fast enough to not need to worry about camera shake and will somewhat freeze the action. More importantly, at shutter speeds of 1/60 and 1/125 you should have no concerns about chasing white balance issues in strange lighting. And, this is also below the synch-speed of the flash, so you will get a very short flash duration, which will do a very good job of freezing action (it makes the shutter appear faster than it really is, depending on how bright the flash is compared to ambient). Choose an ISO that gets you an aperture that is acceptable, set flash to automatic, and adjust your FEC to balance the flash with the ambient to your tastes. My preference is -2/3 stop but YMMV.
I'd avoid using flash with Av mode, as it tends to drag the shutter in low light and then you're looking at very long shutter speeds.
Another thing to try is to go to M mode, set a shutter at 1/125, set an aperture pretty wide, set the ISO to "auto" and the flash as outlined above. Let the camera vary the ISO for you.
If you don't use the flash I'd probably still go Tv mode at 1/125 and adjust the ISO to get a desired aperture. Some might say switch to Av mode and go wide-open and let the camera give you the fastest shutter possible, and that isn't bad advice. The only problem can be that some types of artificial lighting (such as mercury vapor) give off a color temperature that actually varies rapidly over time. For reasons I won't get into here certain shutter speeds are immune to this variation (such as 1/60 and 1/125).
A former sports shooter
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