Simple advice needed for amateur photographer

m_stan

I have a reasonably good pro-sumer 8 megapixel digi camera - an Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom. I take a lot of badly lit indoor shots of my two kids - both under 3 years. Like all kids they move a lot. The result is I get some really great shots but they are blurred, and therefore totally spoiled.

One way around this is to use the flash. The result of this is the pictures are too washed out and lose that nice soft light tone that they would otherwise have.

So what to do without having to invest in lighting? Is there a good ISO setting that can get around this, or do I need to go for fast shutter speed specifically ?

I know this is a common problem. Any simple tips for me please ?

Thanks in advance.

Thirdfox

using a lower aperture value allows you to have a faster shutter speed, ISO - higher you go more noise and faster the shutter speed... all a tradeoff I suppose.

Turn on more lights in the house and manually correct white balance?

rob1891

I don't think there is much you can do about this. The camera won't gracefully manage an iso higher than 100 and that's just too low for indoor available light photography with kids running around.

I think you are going to have to work out how to use your flash effectively. That's not going to be easy because the best way to get natural light from a flash is to bounce it off something, usually a ceiling. You can't angle the built-in flash vertically ... well, you can ...

http://www.moonflour.com/10dollarbounce/index.html

but it's kinda goofy, she also notes that you don't really need a mirror, white card seems to work as well!


Rob

rob1891

So that was home made bounce, here is a home made diffuser!

http://www.listsanddiagrams.com/archives/2005/10/diffuser.htm

I've also read a clear plastic film cannister does the trick. Cut it down the side and slide it on ...

Thirdfox

How old was the guy who made the diffuser? Looks 15 or something!