huge church

Jaime Pennington · Mar 27, 2007

I took photos this weekend at a huge old catholic church and most of them came out terrible. I took up the iso to 640 and 800 on some. I also turned the shutter speed down. the pictures had some blurring because I was 6 rows from the alter. When I was up close with the flash right on the photos came out pretty good. What should I do in this case scenario again. I would like to take photos for a living (it has always been my dream). Also could you guys recomend some good lighting for portrait and wedding photography?

Johnboy2978 · Mar 27, 2007

Blurring is the result of a shutter speed that is too slow for the scene, or can also be from camera shake if you are hand holding it. As a general rule, if you can't adjust the aperture or ISO to accomodate a shutter speed of the reciprocal of the focal length (e.g. if you have a 100mm lens, you want at least 1/100 shutter speed to avoid camera shake) then use a tripod.
You may want to invest in a faster lens if you don't have one already. For wedding photography, you want quality lenses that are at least 2.8 aperture if not 1.8 or 1.4 so that you can get faster shutter speeds while leaving the ISO at an acceptable level. If you can't use flash, your only option is faster glass + higher ISO.

Garbz · Mar 27, 2007

If you master light, you master photography. There is no easy answer to this problem.

Either you need to increase your sensitivity to light using the above mentioneds, or get creative with artifical. This thread reminds me of the story when Morse photographed cardinals' visit to a huge cathedral. To get the photo for TimeLife he apparently used some 30+ flash units in sync lighting up the entire procession within the church.