Can someone please teach me to take low light band photos with a point and shoot? I hate flash, but if I elongate the exposure, of course everything gets blurry. Thanx.
(p.s. They're playing tomorrow night at Shibuya's Club Kinoto, right near Nagi Shokudo and Sakuragaoka Café. I forsee a delicious night.)
Low light shots are difficult (at the best of times) but especially with p&s cams. Although there are some that are better than others. My suggestions (be ready for the how to suck eggs lesson) are:
ReplyDelete(1) go into a mode where you can increase your cameras ISO setting (this can be hard to do with a P&S)
(2) you need to reduce cam shake so either use a tripod or somehow steady the cam (I find convenient structures to rest against)
(3) increase light by either placing yourself somewhere that gets nice highlights etc...
(4) don't use zoom if you can avoid it as it reduces light coming to sensor and increase effect of camera shake
(5) the last trick is increase the exposure length (what you don't like)... but if you do (1-4) and choose when to take photo carefully (i.e. wait till there is little movement of subject) then you should be able to do passable shots.
Sorry... definitely some obvious egg-sucking going on there...
What cam do you have?
I'm gonna call my band "Kitten Life Ballad".
ReplyDeleteJen, excellent name! I want to hear your band.
ReplyDeleteBen, thank you so much for those helpful tips. I do use a mini tripod, but I have yet to find ISO settings on my camera. I do find that fiddling with the f-stop seems to help.
I'm currently using a Sony Cybershot, the 8.1 mp one with the Zeiss lens. It's not bad most of the time but I do want to up my game in low light situations. I find that increasing the exposure is great for things that don't move but... thanks also for the zoom tip! I didn't know that and will keep it in mind. Need to now google how to increase my ISO on this thing.
Which model Cybershot... they had handful of them. Just had a quick look though - most of the ones I saw definitely had manual ISO settings. Of course - expect to get noise the higher the ISO you go. Most of the time you won't notice it unless it's blown up big tho on a computer screen. Blogging's a good size.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget with most digital cameras these days you can achieve a decent zoom effect by cropping after the event... 8mp should give you a bit to play with.
If you can play with the F-stop that's good. The smaller the f number, the larger the apeture, the more light in - the faster the shutter speed. The downside is you'll be decreasing your depth of field (background more blurred). Also at lower f-stops you'll tend to get more aberrations (visual funny things going on). Of course, none of this matters if you don't get nice photos due to blurring.
Sorry for the egg sucking lesson... but here's another... just for luck. You know that you can use the timer to reduce blur by not physically depressing the shutter button (especially if you've got a 2sec timer)... downside is that you've got very little control over what you'll see when the shutter is released. Becomes a lottery. Not as important if you're using the mini-tripod tho.
I think I'm all out of eggs now! :-)
Hey Ben - I have the DSC-N1. I figured out that I have to put it in program mode to change the ISO. I had been trying to do it in the manual mode - where I can change the shutter speed and the F-stop. Anyway I'll keep your tips in mind next time I'm trying to do low light!
ReplyDelete