lighting in a average lit room

ok, well i went to go take some pictures at my friends band practice and we were in an average lit room, like it really was not dark at all

and i could not figure out how to get decent pictures with out using the flash
with iso at 1600 it barely made a difference, unless i needed to change something else

flash off:

What lens were you using and at what aperture?

Most indoor lighting is pretty dim. You will typically need ISO 800 - 1600 at f/2 or faster in order to reach shutter speeds from 1/60 to 1/125.

You needed to increase the aperture also Try taking your 50 @ 1.8 I think that you will find a major difference then the 5.6 that you were shooting at

The exposure is a combination of ISO, shutter speed, and f-stop, so you said you changed the ISO to 1600 and was wondering if you needed to change anything else.
What shooting mode were you in? If you were in Av (which I would be in if I wanted to do a shot in a dark room without a flash), you could crank up the ISO and open the aperture, and the camera will set the shutter speed for you in order to get a properly exposed photo.

A good read is Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Exposure" which explains how ISO, f-stop, and shutter speed work.

egordon99 wrote in post #5981378
A good read is Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Exposure" which explains how ISO, f-stop, and shutter speed work.

I second that. It's a truly fantastic book when you're new to photography.

In both pics you were zoomed in to 250mm, F5.6, ISO1600 at 1/125.

With that lens, you are stuck at 5.6 when zoomed and since it was a band, they were probably moving around a bit so you couldn't use a slow shutter.... I think you were hosed by the combination. You might have been able to slow the shutter speed a notch, but I don't think it would have helped all that much.

Like others said, You could get closer, use the Nifty at a much smaller aperture to get more ambient light.

For anything other than a still life on tripod, f/5.6 without flash = hopeless indoors.

thanks guys, now i know what i need to do

how about halving the shutter speed?
1/60th of a sec for a static type pic would suffice.

you also have a 40D bump it up to 3200 iso