Nx300- how to improve low light performance?

Nxfan23 wrote:

Hi everyone,

I have an nx300 with 20-50 kit lens. The outdoor/ lighted shots have been great but the indoor shots have been very poor. for indoor portraits the pictures have been blurry and the subjects are not properly focused on. (terrible when subject slightly moves) Also upon examining the photos on a computer they are overly grainy and show heavy noise reduction at iso1600 and 3200. I have not been using the flash due to many of the portraits being of a small infant. I have tried several shooting modes auto, program, aperture but nothing looks good. Because of the low light performance I am thinking of movimg away from samsung cameras.

Any advice? will a 30mm f2 or 18-50 ois lens be better?

Thank you in advance!

Mostly how you are using it, you have to add light, photography is the capture of light and if you don't have much it makes it really difficult.  Taking photos in improper light = bad pictures with any camera.

You could get a 45mm f/1.8, the lens lets in much more light (about 8 times), but it won't add contrast and will have very shallow depth of field at f/1.8.  The only way to add light contrast is to add light or find better natural light.

In the middle of the day find a north facing window and you will get very diffuse light.  During other parts of the day pick a window away from the sun.  During the night, get brighter lights and position them closer to the baby.  Ceiling lights are terrible.

Direct flash usually looks terrible, you want bounce flash.  You can get the larger Metz 44-AF1, which lets you swivel the flash behind and bounce it off a ceiling or wall, or the cable for taking your flash off camera as someone else suggested.

You can also add off camera lights, probably want at least 75 watts not very far from the baby, careful not to get it too close, especially if it is a hot bulb, and they have a way of grabbing light stands and trying to pull them over

I see a lot of new photographers complaining about focus performance, low light performance, etc, and my advice is to not take pictures in those conditions.  Find the proper lighting.  You will find that with some fill light in the face you can still shoot ISO 1600 or 3200.  As for the motion blur you might try shooting in S mode with 1/100 of a second or so, if it is too dark at 1/100 and ISO 3200 you need more light (either larger aperture lens or brighter light).

I do think a brighter (larger aperture) lens would help, the 30mm f/2 or 45mm f/1.8 (I prefer the latter for babies), but more important is getting the light right.  The larger aperture will help you keep the ISO down a little and to balance ambient light more effectively if using flash.

Eric