PowerShot S200, low light question

[Dr. Benn]

Hey guys, first-time poster here. :)

I have a question about working on low-lighting conditions with my Canon PowerShot Digital Elph S200. I've had this camera for almost a year, and it works very well, but I always seem to have trouble taking good pictures in low-light environments.

I attended a colleague's concert recently, for example, and had to work with the flash turned off. Almost every picture I took ended up slightly blurry. It looked almost as though I had jostled the camera, but I was holding it as level as I could, propping my arm on the armrest to steady myself.

What are the best shutter or other settings for working in low-light like this? Are there any special techniques I should follow to get clear, crisp images in darker lighting? I have a tripod, but often it's inconvenient to set up for quick shots or in places like the concert I mentioned above.

I've posted this both in the Small Compact forum and Talk About forum. I hope the cross-posting is okay because I wasn't sure in which place this post would best belong.

Thanks very much in advance!!

- Dr. Benn Robinson

[stduc]

If the shutter speed is below 1/30 sec, avoiding blur is pretty hard. If you subject is alive - then nigh on impossible. Look at your exif data (or review the shots in the camera with the info turned on). I expect you will be amazed at the speed the camera took the shots at 1/8 to 1 second I suspect!
Can you turn the ISO value up in your camera? If you can, this may help - but at the cost of extra noise.
Hope this helps.

[Dr. Benn]

Ooooh, indeed you are right. I checked and most of my photos from that concert have an exposure time of 1/10 seconds.

My friend has a Sony CyberShot digital camera (I don't recall the model number) and took some pictures for me some time ago. They were taken under similar lighting, but developed very well. It was indoors in a dark room and focused at a stage with overhead lighting, just like with my pictures.

I just found this site called Lulu and have made a calendar out of his pictures there (and one from some other old pictures): http://www.lulu.com/drbenn/ (edit: scratch that, I was having some trouble publishing the calendars... maybe later.)

They look really good. I went and checked his original files and his camera used an exposure of 1/30 s and an ISO speed 320.

My camera doesn't appear to save anything about ISO in the EXIF.

I hate to sound too much like a "newbie", but what exactly is the ISO? The only ISO I'm familiar with is the International Standards Organization. ;) My PowerShot's user guide tells how to change the ISO, but it doesn't give much of any explanation as to *what* it is. It only says that the higher it is, the more image noise there will be.

Thanks again for your help!

- Dr. Benn

[Novell]

I agree, my friend has a Sony Cybershot (I can't remember which model), and the indoor and low lights pictures of the Cybershot are MUCH much better than my Canon camera. I'm really dissapointed in Canon in this.

Whenever I took an indoor shot, the flash would overexpose the subject with a very unnatural yellow light, and worse of all, it darkens the background significantly (even though the room is evenly lit). I find this to be extremely annoying. After many experiments, the best that I could do is to use Manual, and set the Exposure to -1 2/3, White Balance to Tungsten, and set the Effects to Neutral, and ISO to 50. That manages to turn my indoor pictures from ugly to bearable. You really have to experiment the manual settings to get the "best" (or rather "salvage" your) indoor picture.

I dont know if this helps you or not. If you DO find a solution, please post it here as I would like to know as well.

I'm using Canon IXUS II (a.k.a. SD100) by the way.

[Deebee]

Dr Benn

The ISO setting basically alters the light sensitivity of the sensor which captures the image. If you remember the good "old" days of 35mm film, you could buy a film with an ISO/ASA value of 100, 200, 400 etc - so your camera's ISO setting is the equivalent in the digital world.

The higher the ISO number, the more sensitive the CCD (the sensor which captures the image) is to light. So under low lighting conditions you chould set a high ISO number to enable the limited amount of light available to capture the image. On the other hand, in bright lighting you should use a lower ISO to prevent over-exposing the image.

Of course there is a price to pay for using the higher ISO settings. Due to the increased "sensitivity" of the sensor, the pictures tend to be prone to noise - usually shown as a grainy texture in the image.

Hope this helps.

Danny

[stduc]

novell wrote:
I agree, my friend has a Sony Cybershot (I can't remember which model), and the indoor and low lights pictures of the Cybershot are MUCH much better than my Canon camera. I'm really dissapointed in Canon in this.


I have a collegue with a Cybershot. He recons it is rubbish. Won't focus, takes lousy flash & night shots. He also claims he misses a lot of shots due to shutter delay. So we swapped the other weekend. Guess what - He had the same complaints about my A70. My only complaint about the cybershot was the size! He couldn't believe how good the shots were I had taken. I couldn't believe the A70 was capable of such rubbish pictures. So, I guess a lot of what a camera can do is down to the person using it!!!!

[Novell]

stduc wrote:

I have a collegue with a Cybershot. He recons it is rubbish. Won't focus, takes lousy flash & night shots. He also claims he misses a lot of shots due to shutter delay. So we swapped the other weekend. Guess what - He had the same complaints about my A70. My only complaint about the cybershot was the size! He couldn't believe how good the shots were I had taken. I couldn't believe the A70 was capable of such rubbish pictures. So, I guess a lot of what a camera can do is down to the person using it!!!!


Uhmm...are you saying that I don't know how to take good pictures with my Canon?? I've tried taking pictures with my friend's Cybershot, just point-and-shoot and walah! a not bad indoor picture - good exposure, you can see the background nicely and brightly. With my canon, on the auto settings, point-and-shoot gives my horrible pictures like in my previous posts. I really thought it is a flaw in the IXUS camera (perhaps the flash or the auto exposure calculations) rather than the photographer's error.

And I agree with you about the size of the Cybershot. That is one of the key reasons why I got the IXUS instead of the Cybershot.

[Dr. Benn]

Thank you all very much; you've been a great help. I'll try manually setting the ISO speed along with the shutter speed and hopefully next time I'll get some better shots.

Cheers!

- Dr. Benn