picture of someone indoors in low light. Now that daylight savings time is over this is a common problem.This is a picture I took over a year ago. The camera (a Canon Rebel XS) was set on Program mode with an ISO of 400. The camera picked an aperture of f/4 and a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second. Aside from not being well composed, the boy is lit up with the on-camera flash and you can see that the light falls off very quickly; even the top of his head is dark. This is your classic mediocre indoor photograph.
Here is a more recent example which looks much better. Here is what is different:
- The flash is still coming from the camera, but I'm using a hot shoe flash head and pointed it at the ceiling to bounce the light which is far more even on the girl and also lights up the background.
- I'm shooting in Manual mode with the aperture set to f/2.8 which throws more of the background out of focus (particularly since it is a tighter shot).
- I'm shooting at ISO 800, meaning that I needed half of the flash power than I did at ISO 400 and provides for softer lighting.
There are two lessons to be learned here.
First, the better you know your camera settings and get comfortable choosing them for yourself, the better your pictures will look. The camera is trying to be safe by trying to keep as much in focus as is reasonable, but if you isolate your subject with a shallow depth of field your pictures will look more professional. The drawback is that it will take more effort to get your subject in focus.
Second, you get what you pay for. The second picture was taken with my Canon 7D, which costs a lot more than the Rebel XS, but performs better at high ISO making me more comfortable setting it at 800 or even 1600. Also, I added a hot shoe flash and got rid of the kit lens in favor of a fast 50mm f/1.4.
If you're willing to learn a little more about photography and spend a little extra, you can make your holiday photos look much cheerier.
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