Low Light 50mm 1.8D

[Dušan]

I have Nikon D80 and I will be official photographer on Fest in my town. It's gonna be at night so I need lens that has good low light performance. I don't have flash so I need lens with very big aperture. Will 50mm 1.8 D do the job because I have offer for it for 100 euros. Will it be able to shoot at night at shutter speed 13 and ISO 500-640 ? Those are as bright settings I can get but to still have non-shaky or noisy photo.

 

[nerwin]

The 50 1.8D will certainly help, but can't tell if you'll be able to shoot at night. If there is going to be artificial lighting like street lamps,then I'm sure you can get fast enough shutter speed to freeze motion, remember to shoot in manual.

 

[480sparky]

Shutter speed and ISO will depend on how much light there will be. Since we don't know that, we can't answer.

There may be only a minimal amount of light there now, but the powers that be may bring in additional lighting for the occasion. Again, since we don't know, we're (pun intended) in the dark.

 

[Designer]

I think I would worry less about the noise factor. Get the exposure right, and run the files through a de-noise software.

 

[Dušan]

There are probably going to be alot of stage and street lights since sets are going to be in local park. P.S. I always shoot in Manual.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

Is renting a good flash an option for you? If so consider it. Besides getting the shots it allows shopping in a real world fashion for a future purchase.

I'm doing a 100th birthday party this weekend and it's an event not repeatable so I want to be sure and get the shots. I'm renting a good flash and putting in some work ahead of time to get the color right. Do your homework and get good results.

Oh is borrowing a flash from an associate/friend possible?

 

[KmH]

Using a 50 mm lens on a crop sensor camera, set to f/8, and a point of focus (PoF) distance of 10 feet, the total depth of field (DoF) is only 3.75 feet.

If you open up the lens aperture to f/1.8 to compensate for low light and not having a flash unit, the total DoF is only 9.6 inches when using a PoF distance of 10 feet.

Without using flash and using a wide open lens aperture you will be giving up DoF and to a large degree will need to be very, very mindful of how shallow the DoF is.

 

[Derrel]

Using a 50 mm lens on a crop sensor camera, set to f/8, and a point of focus (PoF) distance of 10 feet, the total depth of field (DoF) is only 3.75 feet.

If you open up the lens aperture to f/1.8 to compensate for low light and not having a flash unit, the total DoF is only 9.6 inches when using a PoF distance of 10 feet.

Without using flash and using a wide open lens aperture you will be giving up DoF and to a large degree will need to be very, very mindful of how shallow the DoF is.

Sort of a dose of cold, hard reality there. But keep in mind; if the final image is very small, as in say an on-line photo that is only say 1,000 pixels wide, or 800 pixels wide, the lack of depth of field will not be extremely easy to see; and you could also probably use a trick I have used many times when shooting with 300 and 400mm telephoto lenses: STart with a FULL-sized image, and select the out of focus areas with the lasso tool, then apply the Sharpen command, then Go to Fade>Sharpen, and Fade out the sharpening pass to about 25 to 35% remaining, and then repeat that process three, or four, or maybe even five times. Then, reduce the entire image's pixel size, in stages, with some Unsharp Masking applied at each size-reduction step. Doing this, one can actually salvage fairly seriously out of focus images for either print, or on-screen uses.

But again...the limit on the ISO of 500 to 640 ISO...THAT is, in my estimation, maybe not the best strategy, and shooting at 1/13 second...ouch! That is a VERY risky shutter speed with an effective 70mm lens length! Like Designer suggested, it would probably be better to go for a higher ISO setting; there is very little to like about a low-noise, well-exposed smeary or blurry image.