Shooting in a dark environment tips?

[jeroen]

I am about to visit a jazz session this afternoon. I expect the setting to be dark but not too crowdy and ofcourse I plan to bring my Canon 350D with a 18-55 lens. Unfortunately I don't own a lense with a longer range yet because the camera itself was over my budget allready for now...

I would prefer not to use my flash. I would hate to annoy the musicians and the listeners. Is it possible to make good photographs without using flash?

I plan to set the camera at 800 ISO, use a low F number, let the camera decide my shutterspeed, focus manually and hope for the best.

I hope you guys have some tips for me.

Thanks in advance,
Jeroen

 

[Polygon]

Try and find a shutterspeed/aperture setting that works good and set it in manual mode. This will make your pictures equally lighted and avoids shaky pictures because the internal light meter just caught a dark spot and geared up the shutter speed.
Should the lighting change significantly, do that again. I made good experiences with that when shooting a volleyballgame under difficult lighting conditions. You don't have to check every image for lighting and can concentrate on shooting. Of course this depends on the lighting conditions. Should it change rapidly (spotlights going on and off and that kinda stuff) you have to check more often if it works.
Also try to grab a fast lens (50mm f/1.8 is cheap if you can live with that focal lenght), it will help a ton.

 

[terri]

Hi Jeroen, I'm moving this to the General Q&A forum, where you'll get better views and hopefully more replies. I feel certain you knew shooting in low light isn't an alternative photographic process. Good luck!

 

[jeroen]

@Terri
Woops, sorry for that.

@Polygon
Thanks, I just came back from the session and downloading my shots as we speak.