Author Topic: blurred shots in low light (Read 670 times)

sirlylos · « **on:** December 20, 2010, 03:46:28 AM »

Guys,

I'm a relative noob with low light situations using the E-P1. I was at a restaurant on Saturday night and was keen to snap a few shots of my family but using Auto resulted in a very yellow tinged image with blurred faces. I tried switching to Aperture priority but wasn't getting anywhere.

Any ideas here?

I've read a few other posts that suggest boosting ISO right up but will this have an impact on how grainy the image looks?

Thanks in advance.

SirLylos

adash · « **Reply #1 on:** December 20, 2010, 04:01:54 AM »

Put the camera in A mode, ISO to 3200 or 1600 and Gradation to Low key. This will make your pictures darker but with a lower shutter speed and so less motion blur.
The remedy for the yellow skin tone is to manually adjust WB, either via a "One touch WB" or by manually entering colour temperature or try Tungsten and see if it works for you.

adash · « **Reply #2 on:** December 20, 2010, 04:03:54 AM »

A short addition - zooming the kit lens at its widest will allow more than one stop of wider aperture to be used, thus letting more than twice more light in. Just don't try a close up portrait at 14mm.

Cotillion · « **Reply #3 on:** December 20, 2010, 04:21:56 AM »

Good advice.

Some more remarks:
Darker situations require more time to get enough light on the sensor to take a good picture. This means the shutter times have to go up (the diafragm is open for a longer period), and there's more chance for your subject to move (or your hand to shake) while the diafragm is open.

The shaking of your hand can be countered by placing the camera on something, and pushing it down a bit. Or use a tripod (or mini tripod like the gorilla pod).
A 2 sec timer delay may help counter the tilting that will often happen when pressing the shutter button.

The movement of your subject is a bit harder to control of course

Also, the kit-lens (assuming you used it) has a maximum aperture of f3.5 i believe? This doens't allow a lot of light to reach the sensor, so it makes it very hard to take pictures in low light without blur and/or noise introduced by high iso.
You might be able to use that noise for a creative effect, for example by cranking the iso up to maximum and the color mode to monotone (b&w) to get something of a grainy film look. Don't know how that will look, don't have my e-p1 handy.

If you want to shoot more often in those kind of situations, you might want to consider buying a lens that performs better in low light.
A relatively cheap option to get more aperture (and more light, so faster shutter times and less blur)) is to buy an old manual lens (Konica hexanon, OM, Canon FD) with f1.8, f1.4 or even f1.2. Then buy the right adapter and for a total of, say, 50-80 dollar you can shoot at very low light situations. Manual focus only, by the way.
A more expensive option is the panasonic 20mm/f1.7, which has auto-focus. It is native m4/3 (so no adapter needed), and will sell for around $300 or so. This is widely believed to be the sharpest native m4/3 lens (although the voigtlander may have taken that throne stopped down a bit), so a great next step anyway

sirlylos · « **Reply #4 on:** December 20, 2010, 08:23:23 AM »

Just to say thanks to both of you for your responses, I think there's enough from both of you that I can use to improve my low-light shots. I've actually purchased an Olympus OM 50mm f1.4 to see how I get on and I'm selling my 17mm pancake lens and hoping to get a Panasonic 20mm/f1.7.

Many thanks. Sirlylos

asterinex · « **Reply #5 on:** December 20, 2010, 02:13:09 PM »

I have the kitlens and have the same problem. What I do is set the camera to burstmode and take a salvo of pictures.

Tercha · « **Reply #6 on:** December 20, 2010, 02:59:01 PM »

For taking pictures in a badly lit restaurant the best solution is to use a flash.
You may not consider it "too dark" but your eye naturally adjusts to the prevailing light so dimly lit rooms appear lit.
To prevent blur without a flash you usually require the shutter speed denominator (bottom bit of a fraction) to be about the same as the lens focal length i.e. 50mm 1/60th sec 100mm 1/125sec etc.
The yellow "cast" is caused by the type of bulbs used the use of a flash will eliminate this or set white balance to 3000k (P67 of your manual)

blurred shots in low light