Slr e 500 can you advise on the best technique to get the best pictures shooting low light , club type ,poor stage lighting, music show. i have tried different approaches, but would appreciate professional advise. metering mode, iso, focus mode,manual mode, shutter priority mode , aperture priority mode, etc.... thank you

With a point and shoot camera, you are leaving everything to the integrity of an image to the camera and sometimes in a low light situation especially "Grainy" suggests that your ISO is set too high. Check your lighting and add light to your focal point (subject). In dark lighting, you must use a higher ISO or better light and yes grain will appear evident in your photos if everything is on auto in some cases. Also, you may want to try shooting RAW (if there is a RAW option) so that your image will be more adjustable in post (editing your photos) because more information is recorded thus allowing to proof with a higher degree of forgiveness. On another note: If you are that interested, perhaps you should take a coarse in photography and try out a more customized productivity with an SLR body that you are able to set your camera to its best settings according to what you are shooting? I hope this helped? Have fun!

In general, taking action pictures is all about getting as much light in the camera as possible. In lieu of light, you can increase the camera's sensitivity to the light. This is called your ISO sensitivity and the higher the ISO, the more sensitive to light your camera is, and therefore they allow you to shoot with a faster shutter speed. The faster your shutter speed, the clearer your action pictures will be. In general, try a shutter speed of at least 1/250. Be warned: The higher your ISO, the more grainy your pictures may be, and if you have a consumer-end camera (point-and-shoot, or 4/3rds SLR) any higher than ISO 800 will most likely destroy the quality of your photos. If possible at all, try adding more light.

Hope this helped.

Chuck

Hi Rebecca--
The hardest thing about low light photography is balancing your available shutter speed to the amount of action you're trying to capture.
Here are a few things to try:
1) Try using a tripod. Steadying your camera during long exposures will greatly improve your image clarity.
2) Buy a faster film. You may need to increase your film's ISO setting. Try 400 to start, then go up from there. Remember, faster film always produces grainy images, and it usually costs a little more to process. If you're stuck with 100 ISO, you can always "push process" the film, where a given ISO is let to sit in its developer longer than usual--This will cost you more too!
3) Invest in a good flash system. Nikon has tons of hotshoe flash systems that rarely compromise the ambient light-mood of a given situation. Look for one that lets you aim the flash in different directions, and try to find one that will meter a light situation on its own.
4) Turn on the lights. If you're ok with losing some of the romance of an image, turn on some more lights to give you some more flexibility when making your exposure choices.
5) Open up your aperture. You may find that a lot less in depth of field will give you a lot more in image clarity and exposure flexibility. Shooting at f2.8 with only a birthday cake lighting your subject will grant you many more valuable shutter stops that shooting the same with f5.6.
Remember, Rebecca, if you're shooting handheld, you must do everything in your power to shoot with the quickest shutter speed available. This will cut down on the blurriness of your indoor images.
--Hope this helps.

Without seeing the photos in question, I can't give you an exact answer. My best guess is that your flash was too far away to cause red-eye but was instead reflected from the moist surface of the eyeball as a white catch-light right in the center of the eyeball.

However, I can give you some tips on how to shoot photos in this situation.

First, flash and telephoto lenses do not work well together. The reason for this is that the light provided by your flash falls off dramatically as the distance increases. This is called the Inverse Square Law. What happens is that the light provided by your flash at 10 feet is 1/4 the light provided when the subject is at 5 feet - not 1/2 the light as you might first suspect. For this reason flash becomes essentially useless when your subject is more than 15-20 feet from the flash. Unless you can put strobe lighting on the stage and trigger it remotely from your camera (a very expensive process), you need to shoot with the available light.

First you need "fast glass" - this means a lens with a small f-stop number when zoomed to the maximum telephoto distance. These lenses are heavy, and expensive, but this is what you need to use to get this job done. Let me know if you want a link to some sites that rent these lenses. You need to shoot at the widest aperture (minimum f-stop number). I shoot with a 70-200 lens at f2.8 for this type of situation. Shoot in Aperture Priority mode so you can set the f-stop to the minimum for the lens (e.g. f2.8).

Second, you need to bump the ISO to the highest setting. This is why digital cameras have a high ISO setting, to enable you to shoot in low light. The images are going to have a lot of noise but there's no way around it - this is part of low light photography. Don't forget to reset the ISO after your are done - you don't want to shoot in high ISO all the time - just use it in low light situations.

Third, I usually under-expose by 1 stop so that I can use a shutter that is 1-stop faster than I could use otherwise - to minimize motion blur. This can be done in Aperture Priority mode by setting Exposure Compensation to -1. The shots will be a little dark but I find that it works OK because they "look" like they are on stage this way. You can also lighten them a bit in the post processing. If the light is really, really dim I may even shoot at -2.

Fourth, only shoot when your subject is in the brightest areas of the stage - don't try to get a shot when your subject is off on the side in dimmer light.

Fifth, shoot in RAW. You can do a lot in post-processing of RAW files to bring out details and minimize noise. If you shoot in JPEG there is little you can do to fix these problems in your post-processing.

Finally, you need to either use a lens with IS or VR that helps minimize blur from camera shake, or you need to use a tripod or monopod to help stabilize the camera.

check the contacts on the lens... since it is copper and would develop copper rust... clean with iso alcohol and let air dry for an hour... clean the contacts on the camera too.

reset the camera back to factory defaults by mode dial to p, press menu, and custom reset back to factory defaults

also certain camera settings such as focus points and iso will help in low light

You need to run it with aperture priority, and have the aperture as wide open as possible (The lower the number the better). You've got the kit lens, which is a notoriously poor performer in low light conditions, you should consider getting one of the Sigma DG lenses.

The other alternative is to get as close up to the stage as possible, and use the smaller lens that would have come with the camera kit. It's a little faster.

Appature settings are never precise because they constantly need to be adjusted to suit the individual lighting conditions, in other words it is impossible to make a blanket statement for the best fstop and shutter speed to use for florescent lighting since that would depend on the size of the room ambient light the number of florescent lights and the distance to the target. As a rule of thumb these cameras have reasonably good light sensors so setting them to auto and pressing the button halfway should show you a display of the recommended fstop and shutter settings. I would recommend then bracketing from these settings. Bracketing is the process of taking several shots while varying the exposure settings to "passthrough" the optimal settings. Usually if you have a good idea what exposure will work a three step bracket is all that is required.
Example (based on outdoor exposure):
Optimal settings show shutter at 500 fstop at 16
Bracket picture 1:
shutter 250 fstop 16
Picture 2:
Shutter 500 fstop 16
Picture 3:
Shutter 1000 fstop 16

There is also a handy rule of thumb for exposure settings
Note that this also changes based on type of film
See the following chart for iso 400 film fstop of 16:
Bright sunlight: shutter 1/2000 th or just 2000
Partly cloudy: about 1/500th or 500
Overcast:1/125th or 125
Medium source (open window on a sunny day): 60
Inside light: 30
Low light: 15 up to 1"
night: varying

Hope that helps

The T1 has the weakest flash of any digital camera. It is only rated for 4.9 feet coverage. So it is natural to want to try some low light techniques. But the T1 is also a point-and-shoot camera, with some scene modes. That means you have little control over low light situations. Under low light situations, it is best to use a tripod. But the T1 does not have a tripod socket. You want to set the shutter speed to a very low speed, the aperture to wide open and set the ISO to its highest setting. But the T1 will not let you control those adjustments. You can try the "Twilight" or "Twilight Portait" scene modes, and also set the Exposure Compensation to +2. Also set the flash to "off". Cross your fingers and fire away, even if the camera warns you there is not enough light. A dark picture is better than no picture. Sometimes you can "pump" it up with software.

Hi: Well, I think you have a problem because you cannot take still shots at night :) Not even with the best SLR. The camera as to get light to make the picture. My advices are, not only use the tripod but when you shoot, but set the timer function so you don't touch the camera when it shoot's and use a high time of exposure like 2 or 5 seconds depending on the subject... Make several experiences with low resolution and when you suceed, make it with a higher resolution ;) Regards