Taking low light photos inside few questions

[CaptainNapalm]

Hi guys,

Tonight it my wife's birthday and we've invited a few of our friends to join us for dinner at a restaurant. I know this restaurant is low lit especially at night but there is some dim artificial and spots of bright candle lighting. This will be my first night out with the Nikon d5100 I've had for some months now and I really want to take a few great pictures tonight.

My protocol for the past few years in these kind of situations was to grab my $150 dollar point and shoot on auto mode and snap away with flash which gave well exposed pictures which were very average. Faces would often be slightly over exposed and obviously details lost in the distant background as is the case with a weak flash. This year my goal is to take much better pics with my DSLR.

Now I understand the exposure triangle and have been diligently taking pictures in manual mode in all kinds of situations but I'm still not sure what my best approach for tonight should be. I don't have an external flash and I fear that using my stock pop up flash will create same scenario as with my point and shoot. If I skip using the flash, I will have to open up to the max and raise ISO extremely I'm guessing to expose well enough at shutter speed for which I don't have to use a tripod. I fear that ISOs over the 800 range or higher will give me unacceptable noise. So question is, what settings would you guys recommend for tonight? Flash or no flash? Should I bother setting up Tripod? I'm not sure if I'll even be able to do this, and if I can't what would you recommend?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. BTW I have the following lenses: 18-55mm VR kit lens, 18-200 VR lens, and 12-24mm Wide Angle lens.

 

[cgipson1]

Wide apertures, and High ISO's.. and the slowest shutter speed you feel comfortable with. If you don't have flash.. that is all you have! Too bad you don't have like a 50mm 1.8 or similar....

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Wide apertures, and High ISO's.. and the slowest shutter speed you feel comfortable with. If you don't have flash.. that is all you have! Too bad you don't have like a 50mm 1.8 or similar....

Thanks for the input.
Yeah that's what I was thinking, just going to have to find the balance between highest acceptable ISO and long enough shutter speed which I can afford without camera shake creating blur. And if this is not working, likely I'll just use the flash.

I think my next lens will be a good prime like you're suggesting.

 

[Mach0]

Sounds like my night tonight. Surprise bday dinner in a restaurant. As Cgipson already said high ISO and as slow shutter as your comfortable with. Faster glass always helps. I'm bringing my d700 and 50mm.

 

[cgipson1]

Wide apertures, and High ISO's.. and the slowest shutter speed you feel comfortable with. If you don't have flash.. that is all you have! Too bad you don't have like a 50mm 1.8 or similar....

Thanks for the input.
Yeah that's what I was thinking, just going to have to find the balance between highest acceptable ISO and long enough shutter speed which I can afford without camera shake creating blur. And if this is not working, likely I'll just use the flash.

I think my next lens will be a good prime like you're suggesting.

You can work with noise... some apps can remove it in an unbelievable fashion! Blur is a different story... lol! Have fun, and good luck! Tell your wife Happy Birthday for us....

 

[Josh66]

Yeah, I would just crank the ISO all the way up and only stop down enough to still have a decent shutter speed.

Personally, I find that I can shoot handheld at shutters speeds as long as 1/8 second without camera shake, but people moving is always a problem that slow. You'll probably want to try to keep the shutter speed above 1/125 or so...

 

[KmH]

You can set the pop up flash power manually.

When using flash in manual mode the ambient light exposure is controlled with the shutter speed, and the flash exposure is controlled with the lens aperture.

The distant background is dark because of the Inverse Square Law. Light power falls off with distance as a square function. At double the distance, the light power has dropped 4x. At 4x the distance. the light power drops off 16x.

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Wide apertures, and High ISO's.. and the slowest shutter speed you feel comfortable with. If you don't have flash.. that is all you have! Too bad you don't have like a 50mm 1.8 or similar....

Thanks for the input.
Yeah that's what I was thinking, just going to have to find the balance between highest acceptable ISO and long enough shutter speed which I can afford without camera shake creating blur. And if this is not working, likely I'll just use the flash.

I think my next lens will be a good prime like you're suggesting.

You can work with noise... some apps can remove it in an unbelievable fashion! Blur is a different story... lol! Have fun, and good luck! Tell your wife Happy Birthday for us....

Thanks a lot.
Will do!

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Thanks to all of you so far for great feedback! I appreciate it.

 

[bratkinson]

The two biggest lessons I've learned with indoor, no flash photography is fast lenses and fast ISO. As mentioned above, you'll have to keep your shutter speed in the 1/125th and faster. The problem is that with your fastest lenses are f3.5...and that's only at their shortest zoom focal length. They quickly move through f4.0 and smaller as you zoom in.

So...the only viable alternative is higher and higher ISO. I don't know what the 'reasonable' ISO limits are on a D5100, as I'm a Canon shooter. Perhaps you could take some trial shots at home with ISO 1600, 2400, and even faster and see if the software you have available can satisfactorily clean up the noise.

I've successfully shot hand-held, no flash, at 1/30 and even 1/20 on occassion. But stopping subject motion at those speeds is impossible. You'll either have to 'pose' your subjects, and/or take 5-10 shots of each situation and hope for the best (eg, spray and pray). Be sure you are 'well braced' to prevent your own body motion...leaning against a wall or pillar, seated, or even kneeling, if that angle would work.

Depending on the post processing software you are using, you may also be able to slightly underexpose the pictures and boost the exposure in post without creating an unacceptable level of noise. But, as mentioned many times here and elsewhere, getting a noisy picture is far better than getting no picture (or one so underexposed it can't be saved).

 

[cgipson1]

So Cap'n... how did it go? Get any good shots?

 

[otherprof]

Not quite the appropriate response, but close, I hope. I also have a d5100 and the 18-55 and 18-200. I just added the Nikon 35 1.8 and love it, and not just for indoor low-light shooting. It weighs next to nothing, and focuses extremely quickly and accurately. By the way, how do you like the 18-200? I love mine, and find it great for travel photography, although I do need a wider angle occasionally and am looking at the 12-24 and the Tokina super-wides.

 

[CaptainNapalm]

So Cap'n... how did it go? Get any good shots?

It was a learning night of shooting for me. My goal was three things: to take shots in manual mode without using the flash, to try to capture that red/yellow lit interior in terms of colours as accurately as possible, and to not take staged shots but more natural shots. So I feel I accomplished these things okay but I really learned that the lenses I have are with extreme limitations when it comes to shooting at low light. I was shooting hand held at 1/20 with ISO 1600, wide open and still underexposing slightly. I then tried a few with slower shutter but they were coming out bit blurry and higher ISO showed quite visible noise. What I learned is I need a good fast prime lens for these types of situations and I'm going to invest in one soon. I'm attaching a few pictures. I know they're not great and the noise is quite bad, I tried to get rid of the noise in PSE but that started getting rid of lots of detail so I couldn't make them look great. I'm content with the colours though and that's what my goal was to capture. The red/yellow lighting in the restaurant.

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Not quite the appropriate response, but close, I hope. I also have a d5100 and the 18-55 and 18-200. I just added the Nikon 35 1.8 and love it, and not just for indoor low-light shooting. It weighs next to nothing, and focuses extremely quickly and accurately. By the way, how do you like the 18-200? I love mine, and find it great for travel photography, although I do need a wider angle occasionally and am looking at the 12-24 and the Tokina super-wides.

Thanks for the input. I might get the Nikon 35 1.8 but I'll have to research a bit first, haven't really looked at any primes yet. I really like the 18-200 and keep it on my camera all the time, good range with this one for most of what I shoot and I actually lime the image quality (many people warned me that image might not be good on a long zoom like that). I have the Nikkor 12-24 wide angle zoom you're considering. I got it from my mother in law who's husband had it and it was sitting in her basement for years so she told me to take it and make use of it. I only took a few photos with it so far inside our condo but haven't done any work with it outside yet because it's too darn cold here lately. So far seems like a great lens and I'm looking forward to taking some nice landscape shots with it and giving more feedback once I do.

 

[Qveon]

I think they are fine considering your equipment and lighting. IMO maybe those picture have more meaning to them but for me i wouldn't print larger then 4x6 or display them online more then 900px on the longest side so yea. If you start going with a faster lens like a 50 1.8, remember that you lose the zoom factor so now you are going to be getting up and down and moving all around to adjust your frame and with that faster lens also comes a much shorter DoF. IE if you shot that couple pic all the way open with the 1.8 and focused on his eye, her hair would start falling out of focus, and if you tightened the frame any her hair would be out of focus. Not to mention you have to be standing 10 feet away to do the couple shot, is that practical in a restaurant?

DoF @ f1.8 = ~7 3/4" @ 10' away to have a frame 4' wide