av mode in night time help!

lawrencek328 · Nov 10, 2013

hey guys ive been using av mode a lot when theres decent lighting but yesterday i was at my girlfriends party and trying to take pictures outdoor at night time with my canon t5i and 18-55m lens but the shutter speed was so long and my pictures would come out blurry now is there a way to use av mode at night time? or should i be using a different mode? i ended up using manual mode but I am not to good with it, i was not able to focus the subject and add depth to the pictures

Juga · Nov 10, 2013

A speedlite can give you a AF assist beam. As far as your shooting mode you should use shutter priority or manual if you want to control your shutter speed to prevent blur. The downside to that is you are going to have to bump your ISO and depending on the lighting situation you might come out with some extremely noisey photos.

lawrencek328 · Nov 10, 2013

thanks joe much help

texkam · Nov 10, 2013

or should i be using a different mode?

Yes. Manual.

i ended up using manual mode but I am not to good with it

Get good with it.

Learn off camera flash.

lawrencek328 · Nov 11, 2013

is there a way to pull up focus points on the screen in mf mode?

bratkinson · Nov 12, 2013

Whether you use Av, Tv or M at night really doesn't make much difference. The 'battle' (as I think of it) is the exposure triangle. As you've likely discovered, the popup flash is pretty much useless beyond the first 10 feet or so. Adding an external flash would be a great help for lighting and keep the shutter speed fast enough to stop most movement. The AF-assist of the external flash would also help in focussing in those low light conditions as well.

And no, Auto Focus points do not show up while in Manual Focus. What value would they be if they did? In my opinion, the primary reason for using MF is to focus somewhere that AF can't be 'coaxed' or 'tricked' into focusing upon.

centauro74 · Nov 12, 2013

You have to learn the exposure Triangle, in your case without the flash. The next thing was to raise your ISO to maybe 1600, you'll get noise but at least you can take the pictures. I rather have noise pics than blurry ones.

centauro74 · Nov 12, 2013

One more thing you can do is to get a fast lens, like the 50mm 1.8, you can find I'd for less than $100 and can help you in those low light situations.

astroNikon · Nov 12, 2013

Just in case for the OP ... Don't confuse "manual focusing" with Manual Mode.

EIngerson · Nov 12, 2013

Higher ISO.

lawrencek328 · Nov 12, 2013

is there another option of a faster lens other than the 50mm 1.8 I like the ability to be able to zoom in and out

lawrencek328 · Nov 12, 2013

im talking about when you flick the af button to mf on the lens, sorry im still new to the dslr world

pgriz · Nov 12, 2013

Each mode (P, Av, Tv, M) has its own method of controlling exposure, and use. Av is good when you know you want to control the DOF with the aperture, and you don't care about the shutter speed. So under low-light conditions, the camera will keep the shutter open as long as necessary to get what it is programmed to think as the "correct" exposure. This is not what you want if the light is low, and you're hand-holding. So you have three choices: add more light (flash, move to brighter area), use the existing light more effectively (a faster lens will bring more photons to the sensor), or boost the sensitivity of the sensor (increase the ISO). Each method has its own set of characteristics. Direct flash generally makes for ugly people pictures, so "most" photographers use either bounce or modified flash to get a better quality of image. Fast lenses are great, but they do this at the expense of a very thin DOF, so focus accuracy and focus placement become very important. Increasing the ISO may cause increase in apparent noise (less of a factor on new cameras, very much an issue with older sensors).

Tv is good when you know you don't want the shutter speed to go too low, and the camera tries to compensate by varying the aperture. However, if you run out of aperture (say your max aperture is f/4), then the images will still be dark. Unless you start boosting the ISO.

P is actually a pretty good mode IF you allow the camera to control the ISO as well, and then it will pick whatever combination of shutter-speed, aperture, and ISO that gives a "correct" exposure. However, with this method, you've handed control of most of the decisions to the programming in the camera, and it may or may not actually work for your specific situation.

M is of course, where you set everything yourself. This is a good mode to use when you know what you are doing, and can predict the effects each of your exposure choices (shutter speed, aperture, ISO) will have on the final image.

Keep in mind that the camera needs a minimum amount of light to be able to carry out its AF functions, and if the light is too low, the camera may be incapable of getting a focus lock, unless it gets additional assistance.