shooting night and low light pics

The other night i was trying to shoot some downtown pics and pics of the lunar

eclipse, no matter what i put my settings on (A,P, S) it would not take the

pic. Now I am just learning about Fstops and all that stuff, but what do you

suggest? I ended up going inside to get my sony cyber H-2, which got a great

shot of the eclipse, but i love my Oly and want to learn the settings for no

light or low light.

 

Tomorrow I am going to a birthday party at a bar, im sure it will be very low

light, what settings should I use? I would appreciate your help, thanks!!

bar picturebring a flash. night shot use a tripod and set on M adjust your ISO, the F and speed ans triel and errors will do.

 

Pierre

Remember the moon is as bright as daylight so pretty much any picture you take of the moon at night will require a graduated density filter. Digital cameras are going to be dead and determined to fire their flash (which doesn't help too much with something several hundred thousand miles away). You are better off with digital exposing one shot for the street (WITHOUT FLASH) and one for the moon and using some cropping scheme. You're going to want to get out the tripod too. (definitely go manual for the moon, the camera will almost always overexpose because it averages, try the spot meter)<p>

 

First which camera are you using? SLRs are going to get you there faster and P+S cameras are their own problems.<p>

For indoors you can try (A.) letting the camera fire off it's flash which will produce a classic "deer in the headlights" photo. That works for most people. (B.) crank up the ASA (sensitivity to light, trades off with digital noise) which may or may not work depending on the light. If you're on film you could be more inventive but by the sounds of things you want leave the camera on auto for the bar (fire the flash).<p>

In general: Indoors: that's what those cameras do. leave it on auto. Outdoors: manual, no flash, tripod, long exposure times. That means leave the shutter open for longer to gather more light, and open up the aperature to let in more light at a time because it's dark.

I am using an evolt510. The eclipse is already over and done with, but why does my camera refuse to take a picture? i have had that happen several times? does it just say "things arent right and im not taking this pic?"<div></div>

Hi Kelly,

 

What's probably happening is the camera isn't getting a focus lock - at least that's the only reason I can think of why the shutter won't release. Are you hearing or seeing the focus lock for these shots?

 

If not, the solution is to set your release priority to off (tools 1 menu). The camera will still try to autofocus with this setting but you can release the shutter regardless. The caution is that the shutter will release regardless of focus. Since autofocus may or may not occur, you probably should set the focus to simultaneous auto-manual focus or straight manual focus using the direct AF button on the camera (I would use straight manual focus).

 

IMO, the matte focus screen on the E-510 makes manual focus difficult. I bought a Katz Eye split prism focus screen and it helps manual focus quite a bit. See them here: http://www.katzeyeoptics.com/item--Olympus-E-510-Focusing-Screen--prod_E510.html

 

Dennis

Oops. Release priority should be set to ON! Sorry.

I don't understand the idea of using ND filters for photographing the moon. You wouldn't do that to shoot a sunlit scene on this planet. The normal moon (non-eclipse) requires an exposure equivalent to 1/100 second at f16 using ISO 100. (It would be better to go for, say, the equivalent 1/1000 sec at f 5.6,for ISO 100, if using a telephoto, as the moon does visibly move across the field of view). The eclipse will require some experimentation/bracketing, to give half stop or stop increases in exposure.