Need advice, shooting under low light without flash.

I eat in restaurants and their lights are always low or dim. How do I get crispy clear pictures without using a flash? Everytime I take a photo inside a low light restaurant it gets blurry or out of focus or shakes due to long exposure.

...high ISO and a wide aperture?

TheBurningCrown wrote in post #8922092
...high ISO and a wide aperture?

Yep...a steady hand will help out alot too...

mini tripod and long exposure will help

Use your 50mm 1.8 at like F2 and crank the ISO. Maybe 6400 even. Keep shutter speed above 1/80.

photo_wed wrote in post #8922064
I eat in restaurants and their lights are always low or dim. How do I get crispy clear pictures without using a flash? Everytime I take a photo inside a low light restaurant it gets blurry or out of focus or shakes due to long exposure.

I too eat in restaurants

Anyway, if it's blurry due to long exposure, just keep increasing the ISO until you get rid of the shakes

If it's really dim, you may find yourself at f/1.8 and ISO6400 though

Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Exposure" is a good book that explains some of the basics. Good luck!

1/(focal length x crop factor) = minimum speed you need to eliminate the camera shake without IS. For restaurants, lenses like the 17-55 f/2.8IS REALLY shine. Because I can take a shake-free shot at 1/8th of a second @ 55mm with it.

Turn up the ISO till you can expose properly at or above the 1/(focal length x crop factor) shutter speed. The problem you run into when you go into the nose-bleed ISO's is that noise takes over and cuts down your "crispness"

buy a sigma 30mm f/1.4 - its a normal length lens on your crop camera. The 50 is a little long. Wider will shake less in your hands. Also f/1.4 lets in more light and the build quality is better. You can go cheap with the 35mm f/2 from canon or expensive with the 35L f/1.4. Shoot at high ISO of course. You should be able to use ISO1600.

nureality wrote in post #8923699
1/(focal length x crop factor) = minimum speed you need to eliminate the camera shake without IS. For restaurants, lenses like the 17-55 f/2.8IS REALLY shine. Because I can take a shake-free shot at 1/8th of a second @ 55mm with it.

I would assume restaurant shots would include people. People need like 1/60 minimum unless they are sleeping because they move, regardless of how stable the camera is. IS might be good for food shots, though.

I think the same as tkbslc.

photo_wed you should understand the correlation between:
shutter speed (and focal length)
diaphragm
subject
ISO (exposition)

1. Higher ISO, wider aperture, and/or image stabilization
2. Tell everyone to quit moving

toxic wrote in post #8928592
1. Higher ISO, wider aperture, and/or image stabilization
2. Tell everyone to quit moving

Lol and +1.

toxic wrote in post #8928592
...
2. Tell everyone to quit moving

But LOL!

Yes but it's true when there is few light is impossible take shutter speed low if the subject moving fast and so the iso aren't never sufficient.

alessandro2009 wrote in post #8928465
I think the same as tkbslc.

photo_wed you should understand the correlation between:
shutter speed (and focal length)
diaphragm
subject
ISO (exposition)

what iso do you guys shoot with? normally i set it as 200-500. i'm just very worried about grainy images with 800+ iso...what ISO do u guys use?

photo_wed wrote in post #8944424
what iso do you guys shoot with? normally i set it as 200-500. i'm just very worried about grainy images with 800+ iso...what ISO do u guys use?

You can have one of two things: Long exposure (and blurry), grain free images, or shorter exposures with some digital noise. It's basically get the shot or not, so you have to decide how important that shot is to get.