Low light photography

[MTVision]

Yea it's set for single point centre weighted Af , and The Af assist illuminator on my flash gun helps, the reason I want a better f stop is so I can try low light shots without the flash gun,

The only negative thing about large apertures like f/1.8 is that people usually miss focus, in the beginning. It can give you a super shallow depth of field with absolutely no wiggle room. The closer you are to a subject the shallower the depth of field - the more practice it will take to nail focus.

The center weighted doesn't have to do with AF - that's your metering mode.When you do get a fast prime just practice nailing focus with it and you'll do great.

 

[love2groovedj]

Ok thanks, I'm still not sure what lense to get though

 

[Granddad]

I do a lot of low light dance shots with my Nikon D700 and a Nikkor 24-70 f2.8, no flash and no AF problems worth mentioning. I shoot at performances in club type situations as well as stage performances and flash is frowned upon as distracting to the performer (risk of being flash blinded and fallin off the stage etc) as well as the audience. In stage performances flash is usually banned. My thoughts are that you need to use high ISO as well as large aperture, you need to have the shutter speed fast enough to avoid blur. Have you tried using high ISO yet? Does the D5100 handle ISO well?

I'm afraid I can't advise on lenses I've not used ... but ask 3 photographers and you'll usually get 4 different opinions. :lmao: ... and they may still not work for you. I bought my stuff with an inheritance after about 3 months of research. I was convinced early on that I couldn't get the results I wanted on the cheap.

Good luck!

 

[love2groovedj]

Iso up to around 3200 with no major issues, although not blowing the photos up to a large enough print size to notice, but on my mac screen which is 17 inch the shots are crisp and clean, I generally stick to IS0 500 when using my flash gun but my kit lense don't really cut it when shooting without flash , hence my need for the prime lense bit what I don't wanna do is spend 300 quid and not really get any difference, I'd rather spend 600 and get a really good lense, although my mrs will kill me