Photography in the dark

[pcasciola]

I "tried" to take some action shots at my son's lasertag party which was in near darkness. I thought I would do ok because it actually had a mirrored ceiling that I could bounce the flash off and not blind the kids. The problem I had, no surprise here, is focus. I used manual focus and tried to focus on the neon on the walls and catch the kids as they ran by, and as expected, the walls are completely in focus and the kids are almost always OOF. I tried to stop it down a bit and use a higher ISO, but I couldn't stop down enough to have a good enough DOF. Any tricks for this situation anyone can share would be appreciated. I've also wanted to get out and night and try to photograph some deer.

[robertwgross]

You should get the red autofocus assist pattern coming out of the external flash, and that should go a long way toward helping focus occur.

---Bob Gross---

[vfilby]

What I do (and most others without the super expensive gear I suspect) is to pick an object near where your subject is going to be focus and then click the shutter when you see the subject.

[pcasciola]

What I do (and most others without the super expensive gear I suspect) is to pick an object near where your subject is going to be focus and then click the shutter when you see the subject.

That's what I tried, but because I had to shoot between f/2.8 and f/5.6, I didn't have enough DOF, and the objects I focused on were in focus, and the kids were out of focus :cry:

You should get the red autofocus assist pattern coming out of the external flash, and that should go a long way toward helping focus occur.

Yes, my 580EX has the autofocus assist pattern, but the Tamron still wasn't able to focus. Maybe I'll try a couple of my other lenses and see if this is a Tamron specific issue.

[JasonMX]

What I have to do is find a lighter object that is almost the same distance of the object your want to shoot, hold the shutter down half way to it beeps that it's focussed, and then point the camera at the object you want to shoot and press down the button fulley.