Question on Photo Lighting in indoors.

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"John Edwards" <ssri1@hotmail.com> wrote in news:1102961913.066165.128170
@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> with this situation.. ? Can we get a good background lighting with
> faster shutter speeds.. ?
>

There is a fixed amount of light. The variables you can control are
shutter, aperature, and ISO.

Zooming in will make the aperature smaller. Increasing the ISO will make
the image noisier. So zoom all the way out and see if your shutter speed
is OK. If not, increase the ISO.

The free trial version of Neat Image does a pretty good job of reducing
noise.

Bob

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"John Edwards" <ssri1@hotmail.com> writes:

> I have a Nikon 4500 Digital Camera and a Nikon N70 SLR. both have most
> of the features I need, like aperture priority, shutter priority and
> also have a manual mode.
>
> The other day I wanted to take pictures of a friend in a nearby Mall.
> The Mall had lots of lights, so I assumed that the pcitures should be
> good. So I started shooting in Auto mode, I saw that the subject ( my
> friend ) had decent exposure, but the background was quite dark. I
> tried different modes, but could not get a decent background lighting.
> The only way I could get a good background and foreground lighting was
> to slow the shutter speed. Slowing down the shutter speed to 1/15th of
> a second gave good results, but had the downside of motion blur with
> people walking behind.
>
> Question : Does anybody have a similar problem, if so how do you cope
> with this situation.. ? Can we get a good background lighting with
> faster shutter speeds.. ?

I believe your camera was using flash and slow synch. That's the only
way to handle that kind of situation -- other than using a higher ISO
or providing more light to the background.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailtod-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"John Edwards" <ssri1@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1102961913.066165.128170@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I have a Nikon 4500 Digital Camera and a Nikon N70 SLR. both have most
> of the features I need, like aperture priority, shutter priority and
> also have a manual mode.
>
> The other day I wanted to take pictures of a friend in a nearby Mall.
> The Mall had lots of lights, so I assumed that the pcitures should be
> good. So I started shooting in Auto mode, I saw that the subject ( my
> friend ) had decent exposure, but the background was quite dark. I
> tried different modes, but could not get a decent background lighting.
> The only way I could get a good background and foreground lighting was
> to slow the shutter speed. Slowing down the shutter speed to 1/15th of
> a second gave good results, but had the downside of motion blur with
> people walking behind.
>
> Question : Does anybody have a similar problem, if so how do you cope
> with this situation.. ? Can we get a good background lighting with
> faster shutter speeds.. ?

Usually the problem is the reverse: a dark face against a background that's
way too light and the solution in that circumstance would be to use fill
flash. In future, if you're relying on ambient light, I'd arrange to take
photos in which fill flash could be used. However, if you don't mind some
blurriness in the background you might try some slow-sync'ed shots. See
http://photonotes.org/cgi-bin/entry.pl?id=Slowsync , et al., for example.

Your current set of pictures might be greatly improved through an editing
technique called "contrast masking"; see
http://www.digicamhelp.com/contrast-masking/ for an explanation or just do a
Google search on the topic. You should be able to substantially increase
the brightness of the background while keeping the brighter subject
constant.

Always remember that a digital imager, like film, behaves as an apparent
contrast enhancer: if you took a properly-exposed photo under white light of
a checkboard composed of alternating white and moderately gray squares, the
photo would look more like a true black-and-white checkerboard. Most
digital cameras have only about 5 stops of dynamic range, sort of like slide
film, so scenes which look to the eye as if there's plenty of light
everywhere will be a lot more contrasty in the photo.