picture help

[dahamsta7]

hey everyone. im shooting with a canon t2i and a 24-105. i just got the lens and arent quite sure how to maximize its potential. i use it mainly for outdoors which im happy with, but recently tried to take it to a wedding where my results sucked pretty bad. uploading a couple pics and wondering if i yall can tell me some general feedback as to what im doing wrong. most of the pics turned out with this blur, where i cant even tell where the focus was. i was shooting auto focus, in aperature mode at the widest.

im thinking right off the bat, theres not enough light in the place. it was fairly dim/dark. and on top of that, there was too much movement so again couldnt get a fast enough shutter speed with the lighting. if so, what i can i do to get better photos? use a flash? any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

 

[SCraig]

You're shooting too slow. 1/40 second in the first one and 1/20 second in the second. You need a lot more shutter speed to shoot indoors without a flash, which means you're going to have to open the aperture more (already at f/4) or increase the ISO (already at 3200) or get some more light in there.

 

[scorpion_tyr]

What you'll have your settings at really depends on the situation and each one is different. I'm assuming the lens your talking about is the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L. If that's the case for an indoor wedding the easiest way to tell you how to get good results is this: Turn the mode selector to Av, look in the viewfinder, focus on something, use the dial infront of the shutter button while looking at the green info in the viewfinder, one of the numbers will change as you turn the dial, that's your aperture, when it hits 4 it won't go anymore, leave it there. Now bump up your ISO to 800. If the lighting is good you won't get anymore motion blur, if it's bad you may need to bump up the ISO to 1600 or 3200. Anything beyond that and you'll start to get some noise in the dark areas, but you may have to do it.

 

[dahamsta7]

thanks guys...so it seems like i need a much faster shutter speed, then to make up for the less light crank up the ISO and open the aperature.

i guess a follow up question, i shoot in AV with it at f/4 and would think it would auto choose the shutter speed/iso for the best picture, but seeing as to how thats not the case, in these situations should i be going manual?

 

[bratkinson]

I, too, shoot with the 24-105 f4 L lens indoors. In fact, it's my primary indoor lens. As expected, at f4, it's largest aperture size, it's just not enough to let in sufficient light with exposures faster than about 1/60th second (1/100th is even better to stop motion) under typical indoor lighting. So I use an external flash (the popup on my 60D is a permanent decoration, as it's only good enough to light up about 10'). I like to keep the ISO setting at 800 or under to limit noise, so the flash provides the needed light to get proper exposures at shutter speeds fast enough to stop people-motion...and the IS on the lens helps stop the motion of these older hands.

One method for getting good results with available light is a 'faster' lens to let in more light...f2.8 or even lower number f-stops. They let in 2x or even 3x more light when wide open. But then the depth of field (in focus range) gets very narrow, even down to 2" or less, which adds a new set of complexities to getting the desired picture.