Dark/Night Photo

[DSLRNewbie]

Hello!

I purchased a Canon Rebel T2i about a year ago and love the pictures I can take with camera preset settings. I now have more time to learn about what the camera can do and need some help with the manual settings.

I am trying to take a picture of my son when he falls asleep in front of his humidifier.

The setting is a completely dark room with his face in front of the a small orange light on the humidifier. It puts a lovely orange glow on his face and he looks so peaceful sleeping.

I have no idea how to capture the orange glow of the dim light on his face.

Please help!!!

Sincerely,
Sarah

 

[Buckster]

1. Tripod, beanbag or other means to making the camera stay still for a long exposure without it moving AT ALL.
2. Remote shutter trigger or use the timer so that you're not pressing the button on the camera, which would shake it and defeat step one above.
3. Take the ISO up to just before it makes photos with more noise than you want (experiment to find where that is).
4. Use a long enough exposure to let in enough light to get the shot you want. If at first it's too dark, lengthen the time. If it's too bright, shorten it. It could take as long as several seconds, depending on how dark the scene is.

 

[creisinger]

+1 to what Buckster recommended.

I believe what he meant with 3. was to try to keep ISO as low as possible (100, 200) to reduce the amount of noise.

I'm doing a bunch of low light stuff and as long as your subject is not moving/sleeping you should get away with several seconds of exposure time you shouldn't have to worry too much about motion blur due to the fact that your little one is breathing.

With 18MP you should be able to regain some sharpness by downsizing the image to 6 or 8 MP which still is good enough for a 30x20 print if you like.

Even if you have to go up to ISO 400 or 800 the reduction in size will work in your favor and not be so noticeable.

Maybe you have to re-position the humidifier so that the light won't cause a nasty burnt out highlight at the closest spot to child's face.

Best of luck. Let's see the result

 

[Buckster]

I believe what he meant with 3. was to try to keep ISO as low as possible (100, 200) to reduce the amount of noise.

Nope, not actually in this case.

For an absolutely stationary, non-living subject that cannot move on its own, sure, go as low as possible and let the shutter be as long as needed. But when the subject is alive and breathing, twitching maybe, etc., I want the shutter is fast as possible, even if that IS a few to several seconds - better than twice or three times or 5 times as long.

So, for this long exposure of a sleeping child who's breathing, I want the OP to be able to use as short a shutter speed as possible, and to achieve that, I say raise the ISO as high as possible, limited only by what's acceptable noise-wise.

Example: If the OP looks at a photo shot at ISO 100 and one at ISO 125, and they're both okay noise-wise, go with 125 to shorten the shutter time. Now go ISO 125 versus ISO 160 and do the same thing. Then 160 vs 200, 200 vs 250, 250 vs 320, 320 vs 400, 400 vs 500, etc. At some point, the noise is going to be unacceptable to the OP and, at that point, they've found their upper ISO limit.

Wherever that upper limit is then, all they need to do is set ISO there or perhaps one ISO stop below, and their shutter speed will be as short as possible for a correct exposure in that dark situation, yet they'll still have a good looking photo where noise isn't so bad it ruins things. So, if their upper limit turned out to be ISO 2500, they could shoot there or at, say, ISO 2000, and be good to go. If it turned out to be ISO 6400, they could be shooting that high or drop down to ISO 5000 with absolute confidence.

It takes a bit of experimentation, but it's worth it to know ahead of time where that ISO upper limit is for just such situations. Then you just dial in your ISO without having to guess how high you can get away with, open up your aperture as much as necessary DOF will dictate/allow, and then bring home the shutter speed.

So, I say shoot a series of photos in a darkened situation ahead of time, one at each ISO, compensating with shutter speed to get a correct exposure on each one. Then just have a look at them at regular size, not pixel-peeping at 100% crops, to find where the upper ISO limit is based on what noise level is still acceptable without going over the line, and store that upper ISO number away in the ol' noggin for future reference, pulling it out as needed on the fly in darkened situations.

Not to confuse further, but I hold that there's a secondary upper ISO limit, dictated by how much noise can acceptably be cleaned up in post production, and it's even higher.

 

[creisinger]

Buckster, I agree, your approach is going to produce the ideal result for the OP, and it is a learning curve to get a basic feeling of exposure times and ISO settings as aperture settings will also play a role since there is the danger of getting too shallow of a depth of field...

I'm going by the assumption that once the child is passed out and not moving besides the breathing motion and using a focal length of 50mm or more (not being to close to the subject) it should be possible to shoot at a considerable low ISO in order not to run into any noise issues. ISO 400 or even 800 should still be quite acceptable and hopefully not getting an exposure time of more than 2 seconds or so.

Hard to tell without knowing how bright that LED light is...

But certainly, your approach is spot on!

 

[DSLRNewbie]

Thank you both so much! I am going to practice this week with your suggestions and I will post any pictures that turn out. I do need to purchase a remote though.

BTW, although my son is a living breathing person I only want to capture his face and the light and his face is completely still at that point.

 

[creisinger]

... the light and his face is completely still at that point.

You'll see what we are talking about when you take the picture. Slight motion blur can be expected, although it might not be noticeable when you look at a print 6x4 in size taken with a 18MP sensor.

 

[DSLRNewbie]

OK, I look forward to experimenting. Sorry for the really basic stupid questions but I really have no experience with manual settings.

Should I set my dial to Tv, Av, or M? I know I have to put the lense on manual focus and I know how to change the ISO so hopefully I will be set.

 

[DSLRNewbie]

I believe it is M.

 

[cynicaster]

OK, I look forward to experimenting. Sorry for the really basic stupid questions but I really have no experience with manual settings.

Should I set my dial to Tv, Av, or M? I know I have to put the lense on manual focus and I know how to change the ISO so hopefully I will be set.

I like Buckster’s advice on handling the ISO and shutter speed, but my approach would be a tad less trial-and-error intensive. Here is what I would do, as a first pass at least. YMMV.

• Set the camera to Av mode, set the aperture about 1 stop down from wide open (usually three “clicks” of the wheel from the lowest numerical value).
• Set ISO to 800
• Set up camera on tripod, shut off image stabilization
• Set zoom to desired “crop”—feel free to leave generous dead space around the subject, which provides cropping flexibility in the computer
• Manually focus on the child’s eyes using live view mode zoomed in
• Set metering mode to “spot” and drive mode to “2 second timer”
• Set auto exposure bracketing to +/- 1/3
• Place center focus point over child’s face, press shutter button half way, so camera sets shutter speed
• Recompose if necessary, press the shutter to take the first shot. The 2-second delay should be enough to prevent camera shake due to this action.
• Snap the next two shots, which will be the +/- exposures

EDIT: don't forget to change the camera settings back to more "conventional" things after this shoot (base ISO, evaluative metering, turn off bracketing, turn off timer, etc.). If you don't and you're a noob, you might get some strange results the next time you take out your camera.

 

[Buckster]

I like Buckster’s advice on handling the ISO and shutter speed, but my approach would be a tad less trial-and-error intensive.

Not sure if I was clear enough, so maybe I should stress this: Nailing down the top acceptable ISO setting is not something to do for every shot or even any one particular shot.

I'm saying, do it ahead of time once and once only, so that from then on, you KNOW what your top acceptable ISO setting is with that camera, and can just switch to it with confidence in any dark situation from then on, for as long as you shoot with that camera. If you do that ahead of time, it will never, ever again be a guessing game you're trying to dial in when you need it.

 

[cynicaster]

I like Buckster’s advice on handling the ISO and shutter speed, but my approach would be a tad less trial-and-error intensive.

Not sure if I was clear enough, so maybe I should stress this: Nailing down the top acceptable ISO setting is not something to do for every shot or even any one particular shot.

I'm saying, do it ahead of time once and once only, so that from then on, you KNOW what your top acceptable ISO setting is with that camera, and can just switch to it with confidence in any dark situation from then on, for as long as you shoot with that camera. If you do that ahead of time, it will never, ever again be a guessing game you're trying to dial in when you need it.

Ahh, ok, makes sense. Incidentally, that's exactly how I arrived at the ISO 800 I mentioned in my post, which of course only applies to my camera and my personal assessment.

 

[DSLRNewbie]

Thanks Cynicaster for the step by step breakdown, that is exactly what I needed. I really appreciate all of the help from the wonderful people on this site.

I will post the pics I take.

 

[tibrunner]

With 18MP you should be able to regain some sharpness by downsizing the image to 6 or 8 MP which still is good enough for a 30x20 print if you like.

Umm, dude. No!
Maybe if you print at 72dpi which is complete sh*t resolution.
My camera sensor is just over 24mp at full print resolution (300dpi) I generally print on 19x13 paper. At 8mp you will be printing around 8x10, printing any larger and your images will start looking bad.

My general rule of thumb: leave your camera in RAW at the highest resolution allowed. You bought a DSLR, not a camera phone- why handicap yourself with poor resolution?

 

[creisinger]

With 18MP you should be able to regain some sharpness by downsizing the image to 6 or 8 MP which still is good enough for a 30x20 print if you like.

Umm, dude. No!
Maybe if you print at 72dpi which is complete sh*t resolution.
My camera sensor is just over 24mp at full print resolution (300dpi) I generally print on 19x13 paper. At 8mp you will be printing around 8x10, printing any larger and your images will start looking bad.

My general rule of thumb: leave your camera in RAW at the highest resolution allowed. You bought a DSLR, not a camera phone- why handicap yourself with poor resolution?

I'm not arguing that you are technically losing print resolution when downsizing to 6 or 8 MP and then printing on a 20x30. Of course you're going to achieve better printing results at high resolutions (as long as your shot is 100% focused).

I'm however assuming that OP is not a pixel peeper. I printed 6MP images shot with a prime lens on 20x30 and the results were absolutely fine for my needs. Anyway, most viewers will be at least a couple feet away to look at the photo.

Besides that, I just suggested to the OP to downsize if OP believes it is required sharpness wise. It wasn't an instruction to do so no matter what.