Shooting by candlelight

(cross talk) So dinner has started. Steve is already in there shooting. He is really on the ball. I'm here kind of strategizing what I want to do. I've come into the room, and it's plainly dark, and so I know that there are some steps I am going to have to take. First step I took was I put a faster lens on my camera. I've got an f/2.8 lens that's going to let me get a nice wide aperture. It's going to help keep my shutter speed fast, so that I know that I'll be able to freeze motion.

I also know that I'm going to need to make an ISO change, so I've dialed my camera up to ISO 400. Now, before I even take a shot, I'm going to find out if I'm right with my ISO idea, so I'm going to quickly just meter a shot. I'm just going to frame a shot of some kind, half-press the shutter button, and see what my camera chooses for shutter speed. I'm in Program mode right now, because I'm thinking I just want to keep this as simple as possible on my end. I can always make it more complicated later. So, I am metering and I am coming in at an eighth-of-a-second. That's way too slow, so plainly ISO 400 is not enough of an ISO boost.

So I'm going to crank it up to 1600. That's going to give me two more stops. We'll see what we get. Coming up to a 30th of a second at f/2.8. That's as wide as this aperture will go. A 30th of a second is getting closer, but that's still a little slow. They're moving around some. I'm going to bump it up to 3200. I know I can go to 3200 on this camera without suffering a noise penalty. So I might as well use it and see what I get here. It's getting me up to a 40th or a 50th of a second. That's helping and I think I'm going to be able to work with that.

So I've identified that I need to be at ISO 3200. That's a 30th of a second or a 50th of a second at f/2.8. So my aperture is open all the way. So I'm going to stay there right now, do a little shooting, and see if I need to make some other adjustments.