Carnival help

hi, this is my first post

i recently went to a local carnival with my friends, and found myself in a camera-setting dilemma. it was night and it was more of a low-light situation. i struggled to get my exposures right, in time for the shot. i got a few, but most were gone by the time i finished setting my exposure.

i brought along my 5d2 and ef24-70 (no flash). i usually shoot in Av with ISO set to auto. the thing is, the auto ISO on the 5d2 kind of limits itself to 3200. and in some shots, i need to crank up the iso to 4000 or even 5000 (getting noise is better than getting nothing IMO hehe) to get a decent exposure. so, having set ISO to auto, i now have to manually reset to 4000 or 5000, and the shot will have been long gone by the time i finish.

should i have shot in manual mode? what settings would have worked best given only the 5d2 and 24-70? (mode, metering, ISO, etc.)

i know having faster lenses and flash would help. what would you have done?

p.s. yes im a newbie

Tough situation, but shooting what? People? Personally, I would use manual with this: Need an exposure crutch?
Why? This is what happens when you use any "Auto" settings, including Tv & Av without compensating for their lack of a brain:
Post #47

As I entered a situation where I could see the light had changed, I'd reset the exposure before a shot presented itself. And I'd shoot RAW for the extra latitude.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #12867487
As I entered a situation where I could see the light had changed, I'd reset the exposure before a shot presented itself. And I'd shoot RAW for the extra latitude.

This. And why not just turn the ISO completely off auto and set it to 4000 or whatever seemed to be the most common? You don't really indicate that you were in a situation where light was constantly changing rapidly (like at a concert or something that has flashing lights all over). Maybe from setting to setting as you moved around the carnival, but it seems like you should be able to set the ISO for a given setting and then reset once you moved to a place with different lighting.

Definitely shoot RAW. Also, I would err on the side of overexposure with the ISO. If it comes out bright you can always bring it down and thus "remove" some noise. Also remember that the majority of the data is stored in the brightest parts, so you could potentially recover highlights if you happened to be that overexposed. If you err on the side of too underexposure, then you're going to create a ton of noise in the darks as you bring it up.

Can't you set the maximum value for auto ISO on the 5DII? On the 60D you can.

Having done a fair amount of low-light photography, I would have set it manually to a high ISO (I usually go to 3200 or 6400), then used aperture and shutter speed to make sure the exposure was as close to correct as I could get, with plenty of chimping and watching the histogram. Then, as FrankC stated above, be ready to change the ISO when the situation changes.

Remember that the CORRECT exposure isn't always what the camera's meter wants to do, especially in a dark environment. So I would have been pretty wary of auto ISO in the first place. It's likely that you'll have lighted subjects surrounded by a lot of darkness, and if you rely too much on the meter it might blow out the subjects to try to make the whole scene "average." It's really easy to blow the highlights at high ISO, especially on the red channel.

Depends on the conditions, the great outdoors you are not going to know until the very second, for this reason I use fill flash

I would of got the 16-35mm because I think that the 24-70mm is very limiting, you probably want the whole costume they are wearing rather than just half of their legs and arms

thanks for the reply guys

if you were to go, what gear would you bring?

5d2 with ISO set to 6400 + fast prime