How do I take shots like these? (Night, people moving etc)

Hi guys,

I was out last night and saw some people dancing on streets! (Independence day) - luckily I had my camera with me.. Since I'm new, I couldn't get the shots right.. every time there was too much motion in it.

I couldn't increase my shutter speed since it was night and there weren't any good lights at all.. Took the ISO from 400 to 1600 but it didn't help much. This is a shot which "kind of" came fine ..

What lens did you use?

EF-S 18-55 IS (Kit Lens) :S

The kit lens is way too slow for nighttime street shooting. A fast prime lens and high ISO's is a must. The nifty fifty is a good start. Shoot it wide open and use ISO 800 or 1600 and you should get fast enough shutter speeds to negate camera shake.

crashthenet44 wrote in post #10722340
The kit lens is way too slow for nighttime street shooting. A fast prime lens and high ISO's is a must. The nifty fifty is a good start. Shoot it wide open and use ISO 800 or 1600 and you should get fast enough shutter speeds to negate camera shake.

Thanks.. I'm getting my 50mm 1.8 in less than a week - Thanks

The 50mm f/1.8 will be much better than the kit lens for low-light photos. You may find that you still have to crank up the ISO all the way, but do some test shots at different ISO's to see what works. On any camera the highest ISO adds quite a bit of grain or noise to the picture, so I like to avoid it when possible.

Get the 85 1.2!

One way to capture the motion is to let the motion take place. Let the dancing figures be a blur in contrast to static elements that remain sharp in the frame.

18-55 kit lens is more than adequate if you can achieve 1/4 to 1 sec wide open (even when wide open, it's 5.6 at the long end, but it has the bonus of added DOF to capture enough surrounding information).

What you will need, however, is a tripod and preferably a remote release. If without a tripod, use your camera bag, beanbag, hotel towel or your shirt and place it in between your camera and some street furniture such as mailboxes, benches, etc. to position and secure the camera. It is imperative that you use the remote release to trigger the shutter to avoid any camera movement (or you could activate the MLU and 2 or 10-second self-timer, but when things are happening, those settings can be cumbersome).

Many of my long exposure shots were taken this way - sans tripod (but the remote release is with my camera all the time).