Low Light Indoor 70-200 2.8 IS

[tundraman]

Need some help here....besides bumping my ISO, what is wrong here:
ISO 800
1/250
2.8 IS on

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g115/tundraman02/XSI_Test/ChristmasEveatMoms2009-12.jpg

[tundraman]

BTW, this was bumped up +3.85 on Exposure to get this much light. If I droped my shutter speed I started seeing motion blur. Arggg!

[trevorus]

PP could help a bit, or maybe a bounced flash set a little lower.

[reignmkr]

Too warm? Try adjusting the WB according to the lights in the room.

[tundraman]

Agree it is too warm. I just did a quick edit for this post. I think my only hope is flash but people just seem to hate the flash for some reason.

[tundraman]

Why does my 17-55 2.8 IS seem to work fine under these conditions? Lens elements?

[tiziano]

You should be able to raise ISO and lower time a bit, without getting motion blur. Which motion blur do you get: camera shake or subject motion? For the first, try practising, and lay yourself agaist a wall or your arms somewhere.
For the second, wait for a moment when your subjects don't move much.
Anyway, your white balance is off, and all that noise comes from the underexposed shot.

[tundraman]

You should be able to raise ISO and lower time a bit, without getting motion blur. Which motion blur do you get: camera shake or subject motion? For the first, try practising, and lay yourself agaist a wall or your arms somewhere.
For the second, wait for a moment when your subjects don't move much.
Anyway, your white balance is off, and all that noise comes from the underexposed shot.


Thanks. Here's a shot in better lighting.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g115/tundraman02/XSI_Test/ChristmasEveatMoms2009-49.jpg

ISO 400
2.8 IS on
1/10
55mm

[tdodd]

The comparison between the 70-200 and 17-55 that you've made seems completely unfair. In terms of camera shake, there is not much in it between 51mm and 70mm and in any case the IS was easily capable of allowing a much slower shutter on the long lens. 70mm + 1.6X crop + 3 stop IS means that handholding at 1/15 would have been theoretically possible, yet you chose to use 1/250. You can't blame the lens for that.

As far as having subject blur at less than 1/250, how is it the fault of the lens if your subject is moving about? 70mm vs 51mm doesn't have anything to do with it. If you were getting subject blur, was it possible to ask your subjects to remain still for the shot? If not, could you have timed the shot better to pick a moment with no movement, or fired a short burst in the hope of nailing one crisp one in amongst a few blurry ones? I have to say it does not look like a scene of heavy activity.

Of course, there is a huge gap between the 1/250 you used and the theoretical 1/15 you might have used? Surely you could have got a result with a compromise of maybe 1/60, could you not. When shooting in poor light, indoors, 1/60, f/2.8, 1600 ISO + bounced flash is about where I live. That's pretty standard for things like wedding receptions. Even without flash, it is usually possible to get sharp shots of living people at 1/60. You just have to time things properly.

Here's an example with my 30D and 70-200, handheld at 200mm, 1/80, f/2.8, 1600 ISO, no flash. The only edits are a small crop and WB adjustment. Clearly the girl is in the middle of opening her bag, so she is definitely not completely static, but at 1/80 the blur is negligible (actually I don't see any, even at 100%). I can't help feeling you were over-cautious at 1/250, and why struggle with 800 ISO when using a 7D? Shooting at 1/80 and 3200 ISO would hopefully have had you sorted. That would be the ~3.7 stops you needed. It is better to bump the ISO to get the exposure you need than to underexpose at the point of capture and then bring levels up later in post. Even the 50D can turn in decent results at 3200 ISO. For the 7D it should be no problem.

By the way, in terms of your edit to the original underexposed shot, I guess you used Lightroom or ACR for the fix. and only boosted the Exposure. That has left your shadows and black still looking way too dark. Try using the "Blacks" adjustment and lower it to 2, 1 or even 0 and see how that looks. If you can make the unedited original available, especially a raw file, it might be interesting to see what steps people suggest to immprove things. Certainly I'd be happy to take a shot at it.

EDIT : I've just added a shot from my 50D and 70-200 at 148mm, 1/80, f/2.8, 3200 ISO. This was shot raw and processed in Lightroom with no edits except a WB adjustment. This shot has exactly the extra 3.7 stops of exposure that you needed, so I guess the lighting I had here was much the same as the light levels you were working with. I don't see blur.

[tdodd]

Actually, I've just remembered one of my most glaring exposure cockups. I'd just been shooting outside in dazzling sunshine and then came indoors and was shooting in a rush and fumbled my exposure adjustments (I almost always shoot in manual mode). I've firstly attached the original image as captured, and then the edited version with +3 on exposure, Blacks at 2 (down from 5) and contrast at 10 (down from 25). Had I not tweaked the blacks and contrast it would have looked very odd. It's not great, but it's a reasonable save.

[tdodd]

Last example - 50D + 85/1.8 handheld at 1/125, no flash and obviously no IS. No sign of blur. Like I said, I'm very surprised that you needed 1/250 with your 70mm stabilised lens.

[tundraman]

Tim,

Sorry but you seemed quite confused. I am not blaming the lens at all. They are two different beasts. I was simply trying to figure out how to successfully take low light indoor shots with my 70-200 because it is an amazing lens when I capture a good shot.

[snyderman]

tundraman,

in your original shot example is plain and simple not enough light getting through the lens for the shot. If you correct in post, you'll see so much noise the shot will be ruined. Other than that, WB incorrect and not sure if that can be saved due to way underexposed.

If you're new to that lens, it takes some time to get used to the weight and not 'yanking' the camera when you actuate the shutter. It's not a nifty fifty by any stretch!

Not sure what body you have but crank up the ISO so you can keep the shutter at a reasonable speed until you get more stable with that huge hunk of lens and glass out front. The IS will give pretty good stability on shots down to about 1/60 for me, but below that is very hit or miss.

Also, if your body allows for microadjust of the lens that would be a good exercise to complete.

dave

[Titus213]

The IS on the Canon 70-200/2.8 IS should allow a reasonable image down to 1/80~1/100 at the 200mm end. It obviously does nothing the stop the subject motion. 1/250 should not be necessary except to stop subject motion at the 70mm end.

The 7D should certainly be able to handle a lot more ISO and dropping the shutter speed to 1/100 should give a much better image.

The rest is practice and technique.

[pgruiz123]

Tim,

Thanks for taking the time to post your reply. I played around with black in ACR out of curiousity and learned something new.

[René Damkot]

Tim,

Sorry but you seemed quite confused

Must be two of us then... You ask a broad question, expect a broad response...

what is wrong here:

As pointed out before, a few things. Underexposure is the main error.

Don't be afraid to use high ISO.

If you and the subject are "stable" 1/60s at 200mm should be do-able.

This is the 80-200L. No IS obviously:
http://www.moonglade.net/rene/rhd20060210Anat0029.jpg

[tdodd]

Michael, despite the insults I'm going to try this again. You wrote....
Why does my 17-55 2.8 IS seem to work fine under these conditions? Lens elements?
It's nothing to do with the lens choice. It's the way you set up the camera.

The second image is correctly exposed because you had the camera in PROGRAM mode and the camera got to choose the exposure setting of 1/10, 400 ISO, f/2.8. Nice job, camera.

The first image is severely underexposed because you shot in SHUTTER PRIORITY mode and forced a shutter speed of 1/250. The difference in exposure between the 1/10 the camera picked and the 1/250 you picked is 4.7 stops. You did bump up the ISO by 1 stop but that still left a shortfall of 3.7 stops, which is the adjustment you said you had to dial in with your edit. The camera could not open up the aperture further than f/2.8 and you did not have safety shift enabled so there was nothing the camera could do for you.

If you were able to get sharp shots at 51mm and 1/10 I do not see why for a shot at 70mm (an increase in FL of only 1.4X) you needed to increase the shutter speed by a factor of 25X. I find it hard to believe that you would not have been well served by shooting at 1/80, unless you forgot to turn IS on. By the way, I'm fully aware of the difference between camera shake and subject blur but I'm just covering all bases here.

If you had picked 1/80 as your shutter speed you would have needed 3200 ISO to achieve a correct exposure. As you chose to shoot at 1/250 you would have needed 10,000 ISO for a correct exposure, not the 800 that you picked.

I understand that people have their own favourite shooting styles, but if it had been me shooting in these conditions I would have used manual exposure. Probably I would have also used bounced flash, but if not, then I think fixing the exposure at 1/80, f/2.8, 3200 ISO would have served me well, no matter which lens I was using, nor which focal length. By locking the exposure manually I would also not be risking odd metering and odd exposures depending whereabouts in the composition the room lights appeared. Of course, making sure IS mode 1 was engaged would be a wise precaution too.


Since you also asked....

Need some help here....besides bumping my ISO, what is wrong here:

I do not like the composition. You have dead space behind the older gent but have cropped through the younger guy for no apparent reason. Tight crops have their place, but why chop through one of your subjects and leave a vacuum behind the other one? It appears to me that the eyes of the older gent are not engaged with the other chap, but are just sort of looking nowhere in particular. Indeed, all three of them seem to be looking at nothing in particular. There is no intensity to the relationship between the three people. You also haven't caught an especially interesting expression from the baby. This does not seem to be a "decisive moment". I also find the bright lights in the background to be distracting as they draw the eye away from your subjects.

The white balance does look a little warm, but that could actually be quite appealing, if the exposure had been correct. As it is, the underexposure is causing colours to appear too saturated and making reds too red, oranges too orange, yellows too yellow.

The edit that has been performed to fix the exposure error is incomplete. Increasing exposure is a good start but that really only affects mid tones and highlight area within the histogram. The blacks and shadows have remained rooted in the region of severe underexposure. The black point should be adjusted until there is, perhaps, just a little shadow clipping evident in the deepest shadows of the scene. Fill and Brightness may also need tweaking to fine tune the distribution of tones within the extremes of pure black and pure white.

Michael, I suggest you learn some manners and then try learning something about photography. For the latter you might like to start here - http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=414088. You can talk to your parents about the former. You certainly I have no right to call me dumb and I can assure you that I am not the one that is confused. I am glad to see that a moderator has edited your offensive post. Is it usual where you come from to attack people who are trying to offer help?