Shooting indoors is tough...

My GF Rcahel's Auntie is an artist. Her work was up for auction last night so we went along to offer a little support (not financial support though!).

I was trying to capture the moment the hammer went down on her piece and as such, took a lot of shots to see how I can expect it to come out. Well, I was shooting at iso400 to try and save myself some time reducing the noise but still found it tough getting a sharp image at 1/40s!

I'll post an image of before and after to show the difference a little PP makes, but I wanted to say:

If you're shooting indoors in a poorly lit college hall... bring a HUGE light with you!

The first time I got a chance to shoot in a low light situation, just practicing at my local badminton club, I was quite surprised at how long an exposure my 5D's metering wanted. At ISO1600 shooting with a 2.8 lens it still wanted to put the shutter at 1/30, which was way to slow for sports. I decided the try out Manual mode, as I was only treating the shoot as practice, and managed to get some OK shots.

At first I was a bit dissapointed with the images I got, low light, manual mode leading to under exposed images, tugsten lighting, but not worrying about doing it perfectly I had a fun session messing around with CS Camera Raw and got more OK shots from the bunch.

I do a lot of indoor work and it is tough. I take my camera to the pub, office and anywhere else so I can practice as much as possible. Being at an event and having time restraints to get the shots done is much harder.

I took a few shots at a local tavern the other night - it's tough in low light. Even at ISO 3200 and f/1.4, I was getting 1/40 to 1/60 shutter speeds. Marginal for stills, but not much else. Having a bit of "mood" lighting really helps in these situations, but that isn't always possible.