What's your "hit rate" in poor light? How to go up?

I shot an event (a kids concert with some dancing) in very poor light - had to keep ISO above 640, more often just shy of or at 1600. Most at 1/60 to 1/25 second, pretty much all at f/2.8 to f/4.

After discarding poorly composed or uninteresting scenes, from the rest I got about one in three shots on the average that were acceptable from an image quality prospective and only a selected few that were a true eye-catcher.

Most were blurred to some extend due to subject motion, which was expected due to the slow shutter speeds, but there was not much I could do it seems. Several had missed focus, though there were surprisingly few of these.

Camera shake did not seem an issue - used VR lenses (mostly 70-200 VR and some 18-200 VR).

So, what to do? I could not use flash. I tried to shoot several shots of the same scene if I had time with the hope to get at elast one acceptable, and that worked, in most cases.

With the D70 I find it hard to focus manually in dim light and if the subject is moving, autofocus works better for me. Have I had an ISO3200 I'd felt much better, but jumping to Canon for this I'm not inclined to do, yet

So, what is your experience? Open to ideas/discussion in poor light situations

Under poor lighting conditions I feel like I have two choices: don't bother shooting, or shoot a lot! For me, part of the thrill of digital is that there is very little cost when I have to "spray and pray," as we say in the firearms world.

I shoot a lot of plays, concerts, and other performances. I don't worry about my keeper ratio in such circumstances; I just hope for a few good ones. DZ
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deanzat said:

Under poor lighting conditions I feel like I have two choices:
don't bother shooting, or shoot a lot! For me, part of the thrill
of digital is that there is very little cost when I have to "spray
and pray," as we say in the firearms world.

I shoot a lot of plays, concerts, and other performances. I don't
worry about my keeper ratio in such circumstances; I just hope for
a few good ones. DZ

Click to expand...

Just out of interest what is the lowest shutterspeed you have used and gotten decent results in low -light concert conditions at say F1.8 (i have the 50mm lens) I took about 60 shots at a concert last week and disgarded about 95% of what I took but I didn't go lower than I;50



Look at us through the lens of a camera
does it remove all of our pain
If we run they'll look in the backroom
where we hide all of our feelings

If I would have to shoot at anything slower than 1/60 I just put the camera away; my technique (shaky hands) is so poor that I try to use the fastest speed possible and sacrifice depth of field. When we cannot control the light, we just do the best we can... DZ
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hackmax said:

Just out of interest what is the lowest shutterspeed you have used
and gotten decent results in low -light concert conditions at say
F1.8 (i have the 50mm lens) I took about 60 shots at a concert last
week and disgarded about 95% of what I took but I didn't go lower
than I;50

Click to expand...

Don't know what "decent" is for you, but for me, if I get lucky to get the moment right so that the subject does not move too much, then I have gone as low as 1/15s. If there is movement (like vigorous singing or dance), I do not think less than 1/100 would do much good (even at that there would be blur, but faces may be more or less sharp).

D70s, handheld, VR lenses. Heavily sharpened & noise reduced in a primitive way (no Noise Ninja/Neat Image for me, yet):

1/15s f/4.5 at 22.0mm, ISO1600



1/25s f/2.8 at 95.0mm, ISO1600

Wow, these were taken at ISO 1600 with no noise reduction? I haven't tried any dark shots without flash yet. Please give us more advice.

--
Finally got my D50 kit!

I shoot a lot of action shots in low light conditions. It's amazing the difference a f/1.8 lens makes over a f/2.8 lens in shutter speed. I would definitely look at a 50 f/1.8 or f/1.4 and a 85 f/1.8 It makes a huge difference.
--
DAVE V.
'Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most'



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Equipment list in profile.

I shoot low light performances of all types for work. Your hit rate is going to jump way up if you have a 1.8 or a 1.4 lens. I find that I can generally stay at 1/200 - 1/60th with a 1.8 lens in 'normal' theater lighting.

Agree with post below. Remember that VR doesn't help much if the people on stage are moving around a lot. Only remedy for that is faster shutter speed....and only way to get that is to either bump up ISO or get a faster lens.

I have only the 50/1.4D (for now) and my low lighs shots are mostly keepers , shooting at ISO800 and 1.4 or 1.8. Only "problem" with 1.4 is that sharpness area is very narrow, but if you're taking pics of performance on stage, that should be less of a problem.

happy shooting!

cmoefc said:

I shoot low light performances of all types for work. Your hit
rate is going to jump way up if you have a 1.8 or a 1.4 lens. I
find that I can generally stay at 1/200 - 1/60th with a 1.8 lens in
'normal' theater lighting.

Click to expand...

--
thanks,
shamit
------------------------
D50 50/1.4D

A couple of focus related things that have helped me in the past (this is with a D50)

Selecting central focus point only

If it is practical (often it isnt), prefocusing & switching off the autofocus.

Sharpness is the problem. I havent tried it yet, but I have heard of people shooting in RAW, deliberately underexposing by a stop to get the extra speed & then bringing the exposure back at the editing stage. I dont know what it would be like in terms of noise etc but it may be worth a try.

Yea I really want a 50/1.8 now to cover the low-light but when searching on ebay, there seems to be many variations of the 50mm. There are some with a window, some without, some with different placement of the labels, etc... Which one should I be looking to get?

--
Finally got my D50 kit!

sdyk913 said:

Yea I really want a 50/1.8 now to cover the low-light but when
searching on ebay, there seems to be many variations of the 50mm.
There are some with a window, some without, some with different
placement of the labels, etc... Which one should I be looking to
get?

Click to expand...

A quick(not checked) guess would be that if there isnt a focus "window" then it isnt autocus but manual focus.

AF lenses should have the letters AF, AF-N or AF-D somewhere in the description. The lens description is described as 50/1.8 AI or AIS, then its a manual focus lens.

Does it really matter which one I get between the AF, AF-N, and AF-D models? I have the D50 by the way.

--
Finally got my D50 kit!

In Nikon Capture, noise reduction on "better quality" setting, detail 6 or 7, intensity 10 (max). Saved as TIFF. After that, I used some manual blur in Photoshop Elements to clean-up carefully where needed.

sdyk913 said:

Wow, these were taken at ISO 1600 with no noise reduction? I
haven't tried any dark shots without flash yet. Please give us
more advice.

--
Finally got my D50 kit!

Click to expand...

Most cameras have trouble doing AF in lowlight even with fast lenses.

The ONLY lens I could use in lowlight with about 95% hit rate was the 50mm f1.4. On my D50 it was almost PERFECT. I don't get the same accuracy with some of the 2.8 lenses I've had and still have... So to answer your question. If you want amazingly accurate AF in lowlight, you'll need a fast lens like a 1.8 or better yet a 1.4 lens.

That way you have more light coming in and hitting the sensor and your accuracy will go WAY up.

Anohter thing is to do your best to find something with a strong contrast on your subject, the edge of the clothes, patterns, etc. That's how your camera's AF sensor works - to find something with different colors and set the lens to produce the biggest contrast between the 2 colors.

Use your centre focus point too if you have a D50/D70/D70s because that's the only one with the cross-point sensor for doing AF.

My 80-200 is more accurate in lowlight than my 17-55, why? Because with the 80-200 I'm zoomed in more and thus having the advantage of pinpoint where the contrast is on my subject. With shorter range zooms like the 17-55 the AF has to guess just exactly WHAT you're tring to focus on - which is a bit harder to do with less light.

Hope that helps

I do use the 50mm f/1.4 when I can move a lot, but it only gets to 50mm

It is great once you close it down to abuout f/2, though shots below that are certainly usable (all hand-held by the way):

1/6s f/1.4 at 50.0mm



1/15s f/2.8 at 50.0mm



1/13s f/2.2 at 50.0mm with Flash

cmoefc said:

I shoot low light performances of all types for work. Your hit
rate is going to jump way up if you have a 1.8 or a 1.4 lens. I
find that I can generally stay at 1/200 - 1/60th with a 1.8 lens in
'normal' theater lighting.

Click to expand...

No manyal noise reduction here - just Nikon Capture, if I remember correctly...

Btw, Nikon Capture gives considerably cleaner images than Photoshop if you start from RAW.

1/60s f/3.2 at 90.0mm with Flash (Tamron 90mm SP Di)

sdyk913 said:

Does it really matter which one I get between the AF, AF-N, and
AF-D models? I have the D50 by the way.

Click to expand...

D lenses are newer & some people find the wider focusing ring easier for manual focus. Personally I dont think it matters. The lens design is as far as I know, the same for all of them & they all focus at the same speed.(its essentially the old manual focus e-series AI lens) turned in to an AF lens.

banjaxed said:

I havent tried it yet, but I have heard
of people shooting in RAW, deliberately underexposing by a stop to
get the extra speed & then bringing the exposure back at the
editing stage. I dont know what it would be like in terms of noise
etc but it may be worth a try.

Click to expand...

Here's a sample I shot at -2EV ISO 1600 in order to keep my shutter fast enough to stop action.

Pushed it 2-2/3 stops in RAW conversion for an effective ISO over 10,000.



Sure, it's noisy. But you can clean it up some with NeatImage or some such filter (which I did NOT do to this example).

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And converted to b&w, of course.

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