Best setting for hand held night photography for Panasonic G7 camera

Badwater wrote:

Brisn5757 wrote:

I want to take photos (and some video) at a night event of neon and laser lights.
I don't want the camera to auto reduce to a very slow shutter speed when I'm holding the camera. What are the best setting for this event using a Panasonic G7 camera with 25-250mm F3.5 - f5.6 lens?

Brian

If you're seeking a fast shutter in night conditions at f/5.6, you'll need to up your ISO to 6400 or more. I can say from experience shooting 4K that even with a f/2.8 lens in a night sky ISO 3200 at 1/30 shutter will be under exposed with black sky and only the light for detail. Also, you'll need to nail the WB, for best colors when shooting night sky. Set Kelvin to 3900 to 4100. And set the iDynamic to High to avoid huge contrast and loss of detail in the shadow areas.

If you're shooting at twilight with blue sky, and no sun, you can get by at f/5.6 with 3200 ISO and 1/30 shutter. Keep in mind for video you can't shoot slower than 1/30 sec shutter without messed up blur and stutter in the video. The ideal low light shutter speed for video is 1/40 with human movement. 1/30 sec is pushing the limit but will work if the action is not too fast.

Because you're shooting at high ISOs use a natural or standard Photo Style, and don't dumb down the settings. Leave them un changed. When using high ISOs there is not much data to work with, and dumbing down photo style settings screws up the video.

Nevertheless, the lens you have may not be the optimal lens, but it will work for night video. Before you go out and shoot the event. give it a test run at home. So you'll be prepared.

Thanks for the info.

In this case I wanted to photograph (and video record) an light event that mainly had flashing neon lights.

Brian