Walking With Dinos!

[hoofdahorse]

I decided to go and check out Walking With Dinosaurs. I'll be on the lower level in the front row. Hoping to get some good pix with the new digital. Anyone recommend how I should shot in a indoor area in low light? I have two lenses a 18-70mm., and a 75-300mm. I can't wait for tonight. :)

Comments

[collingslion]

You'll probably want the biggest aperture you can get, which will let in more light, though reduce your depth of field. Also, you'll want to expiriment with higher ISO. The higher that number the less light you need to get a proper exposure. The trade off is that you'll also get more noise (or "film grain" back in the day). Depending on your camera ISO 800 might be usable. On my D80 it's pretty noisy for my taste.

When I'm shooting a concert or something, I take my beloved $100 Nikon 50mm f1.8 (Canon makes an equivalent lens at about the same price), which is one of the sharpest lenses you can get, use the lowest ISO I can without too much noise, and use manual mode.. Set f1.8 (or your lowest available.. Probably f3.5 zoomed all the way out with your lenses) and then dial up the exposure time until you get a good trade off between blurriness from camera shake and collecting enough light. Hopefully you can capture enough light that you can increase the exposure in post processing without bringing up the noise too much!

If your camera offers it, watch your histograms. If you're underexposed, the histogram will be all jammed down to the left. If you're overexposing highlights, you'll see a spike at the extreme right edge. It's likely you won't be able to fill more than 2/3 of the histogram without getting a lot of blur.

Don't forget to actually WATCH the dinosaurs. I hate it when I discover I missed an event because I was looking through my camera the whole time. Happy hunting. :)

[hoofdahorse]

Thankies! So much I need to learn about using a SLR.