What could I do to get crisper indoor shots? Pic example inside!

[Gallery29]

I'm still learning. I went to a wedding indoors and the lighting situation was pretty bad -- yellow hues everywhere from the awful lights above. No windows and it was at night.

I got some decent shots at the wedding, but I'm curious as to how I could get crisper photos indoors in situations like this. I think there's a "blur" or "noise" over some of my shots. Here's an image that's been unedited. Forget everything else, I know it needs to be cropped, straightened, and the ugly lines in the hideous plastic backdrop need to be spot healed out. What I'm asking about is the "noise" over the image, the fact that his face is less crisp than I'd like, and how his jacket really shows the noise or whatever this may be.

I used a 50D, 420 EX flash, I believe ISO was at 800 because it was pretty dang dark in there and needed to be upped even with the flash firing, f5.6, shutter 1/64.

Would upping the shutter speed have helped this? I know that the shutter speed can obviously reduce some blur but I don't know if that's the issue here -- which is why I need some advice from you awesome people! Thanks

 

[Gallery29]

Sorry, it is, in fact, actually turned the right way on photobucket. Not sure why it's not showing up on the message board the right way.

 

[tirediron]

While we're waiting for the awesome people, I'll take a stab at it. It's a law; lighting HAS to be bad at weddings (or at least it should be a law; every wedding I've ever been to has had gawd-awful lighting).

The main issue here appears to me to be missed focus. If you look at the gentleman's face, it's slightly soft, but the pillar right behind his head seems crisply focused. I suspect that your camera focused on the area between the white of the pillar and his dark hair since it provided the greatest contrast. That resulted in your point of focus being about 18" behind where it should have been.

Shutter speed has virtually no effect on flash exposure since the duration of the flash can be as short as 1/10,000 of a second, all of the exposure information is recorded in that moment and that will freeze ANY movement.

Hope that helps.

 

[cgipson1]

Strong shadows behind him show that you used flash.. and it if was as dark as you say, flash would have been adequate at that shutter speed to kill all motion blur. Looks like missed focus to me. The candles and pillar behind the subject look sharper than the subject...

 

[480sparky]

Here's the exif data:

Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 50D
Image Date: 2012-07-14 19:20:58 (no TZ)
Focal Length: 55.0mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure Time: 0.017 s (1/60)
ISO equiv: 800
Exposure Bias: none
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)
White Balance: Auto
Flash Fired: Yes (Auto, return light detected)
Orientation: Normal
Color Space: sRGB
GPS Coordinate: undefined, undefined

Since you're shooting at ISO 800 at f/5.6, I'll assume the flash you used is rather low-powered.

Upping the shutter speed may help mitigate any ambient light issues that might cause camera/subject movement. But you can only raise the shutter speed to a certain point before you start to get into synch issues.

I'm with tirediron.... focus was just missed on this one. Getting a more powerful flash so you could stop the lens down more would be one solution if you're interested in spending money. Paying keener attention to what the camera is focusing on would be a far cheaper option.

 

[Gallery29]

Missed focus is HIGHLY likely here. Their ceremony was 4 minutes long. Yes, I said FOUR minutes -- from start to finish. It was "I do...I do..." rings, candle lighting, kiss the bride! Needless to say, I was snapping pretty quickly. Luckily, I have several shots very similar to this where the focus is on his face, however I wanted to send my worst example of the "noise" I'm seeing.

 

[Gallery29]

Do y'all have any tips for using the auto-focus feature on the camera/lens QUICKLY? Like I said, I'm still learning. It's really hard to fiddle with the points of focus buttons during a 4 minute ceremony although I did manage to use it some of the time. Are there any short cuts to this?

 

[480sparky]

Isn't there an indication in the viewfinder of where the focus point is if you half-press the shutter button?

 

[Gallery29]

Yep, there is! But when the camera is doing the guesswork a lot of times the point of focus is wrong (i.e. here where it wasn't on the grooms face where I needed it to be, but I snapped anyway because I was in a hurry!). You can change the POF by using the POF button (different on every camera but slightly annoying for me because I have really tiny hands -- 3.5 ring size and the camera is already heavy for me!). Adding that extra step of re-positioning the POF not only adds time, but you may miss an instant moment. Wondering what other people do about this. I probably need to practice focusing manually but I'm not there yet.

 

[SCraig]

Yep, there is! But when the camera is doing the guesswork a lot of times the point of focus is wrong (i.e. here where it wasn't on the grooms face where I needed it to be, but I snapped anyway because I was in a hurry!). You can change the POF by using the POF button (different on every camera but slightly annoying for me because I have really tiny hands -- 3.5 ring size and the camera is already heavy for me!). Adding that extra step of re-positioning the POF not only adds time, but you may miss an instant moment. Wondering what other people do about this. I probably need to practice focusing manually but I'm not there yet.

This is why I never use auto-tracking focus. I lock my focus to the center point and disable anything that might allow it to change without me explicitly doing it. That way there is no guesswork, I know exactly where the focus point is.

 

[cgipson1]

Ditto! I use spot focus.. and leave it dead center. I also frame to leave some room to crop if I need to, for more pleasing composition in post.

 

[Tony S]

Set the camera to a single focus point, focus on your subject holding that focus point and recompose to shoot to ensure you get what you want in focus. After a while fo doing this you will find you have a very minimal if any delay in getting your shots.

The D50 at best will have some noise in the dark areas at ISO800.

If you "have" to use a flash for lighting in situations like this at least get it off the camera, use either a remote flash or one fo the flash brackets that will move the flash away from the camera casting more pleasant shadows. When using the flash on your camera the shutter speed will have no effect on what the flash lights, but it will affect the ambient light you get in other areas of the image. If there is enough ambient light and the shutter speed is too slow you can still get blurring in the image from a longer shutter speed. I like to find a happy spot somewhere in the 1/125th range and adjust the ISO to get the amount of ambient lighting I want in the backgrounds.

Ditch the auto exposures, maybe use one to establish something close to what you want to get and go manual from that point on. With dark suits it's going to really play havoc with exposure and flash settings. Same thing with auto white balance, if you are using flash set the WB for that. Doing this with both exposure and white balance it makes things more consistent and much faster when you do the post processing later.

 

[Gallery29]

Thanks! I'll lock it, I think. Maybe I can avoid situations like the one above!!!

 

[KmH]

Investigate light source color temperatures and how they relate to the camera white balance seting.

When using flash it is a good practice to gel the flash to change it's color temperature to match the interior light source color temperature so you don't have a mix of lighting color temperatures.

 

[SoCalTiger]

I think we have established that the "blur" was most likely due to missed focus. Regarding the "noise", I believe that is ISO noise. I would work on getting a more powerful flash so you can both decrease the ISO and stop down the aperture. Less ISO = Less Noise. Smaller Aperture = Wider DoF and will help mitigate missed focus although nailing your focus should probably be a higher priority there.