Need a new camera (pics attached)

quarryman

I have a Fujifilm Finepix F460. While its fine for outdoor shots its crap in lowlight situations.

Someone told me that the reason is smaller cameras need to leave the lens open longer to allow more light in thus giving blurry photos in low light conditions.

I like a point-and-shoot camera but still like something that wors in most conditions. I need a comprosmi

Suggestions?

See below for photos:

Concert low-light





Outdoors:

Stephen

From what I can gather via Google, your camera's sensitivity only goes up to ISO 400, which is why you need such long exposures in the dark. Newer fuji point and shoots go up to about ISO1600 which should give much better results at gigs, as long as you don't mind a bit of graininess (noise).

Normally though, you can't beat a tripod+long exposure for night time shots, but that's not really a runner when photographing people.

I think the Fuji F30 has good reputation for low light performance. That has probably been replaced by the F31fd by now.

latchiko

It can be frustrating trying to photograph gigs in low light with a point and shoot. I've tried myself a few times and haven't gotten great results.
I'm not familiar with your particular camera, but there are a few things you could try. Firstly try to hold the camera as steady as possible. In the first shot everything is out of focus, but if you had the camera on a table (for example) only the musicians moving would be out of focus. Next, if possible, set the camera to a high ISO setting and set your aperture to the lowest value in aperture priority mode if available. This should give you a faster shutter speed and therefore less movement/bluriness.
If you do want to upgrade to a different camera, what would your budget be? There are people here that know a lot more about gig/low-light photography than I do so I'm sure you will get good advice.

Good Luck!

Zascar

I have the same problem. I looked into buying a new camera that is good in low light and the Fuju F30 / F31 is definitely the one I want to buy. It won't win any beauty competitions as its pretty chunky, but if it takes better photos then I don't mind. The F31 has "Face Detection" which looks pretty cool

See my previous post here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055052825&referrerid=59211

quarryman

thanks for the replies guys.

I agree about holding the camera steady. I've found that when i prop it up against a wall i can get perfect lowliight shots. But usually I haven't got the luxury of a wall or tripod. Sometimes I hold my breath when taking the photo and holding REALLY it steady but no joy

I know nothing about ISO or aperture times but i'll read up a bit on it. I've never used anything other that 'automatic' on the settings:

If i was to upgrade my budget would be around 400 euro.

Stephen

Basically, the higher the ISO the more sensitive the sensor in the camera - so you can take photos with fast shutter speeds in lower light. The trade off is increased digital noise - afkin to grain visible in photos shot on high-speed film.
edit: of course, when shooting in good light you can just set the ISO back down to 100 or whatever and suffer no ill-effects of noise.

The lower the aperture number (e.g. f/1.8) the more light the lens can let in - the lower the better for shooting in low light.

Since you're into shooting gigs and stuff, maybe something with a bigger zoom range might be more suitable for you? Fuji has some good bridge cameras with 10x zoom and good low light performance. (e.g. s6500fd)

I found dpreview.com to be an excellent resource when researching what camera to buy.

Ghost Train

The iso (sensitivity) setting is an important factor here, the photos above are tagged with an iso of 100, if you set the iso to it's highest setting 400(?) the camera will be able to take a quicker shot, so there will be less chance of blur. ISO of 400 should be okay, but on compact cameras anything over that is usually pretty poor because of the noise it adds

The other factor is the zoom, when you zoom in the aperture is smaller, so less light gets into the camera and the camera can't take a shot as quick, again more chance of blur. So zooming fully out (wide) for these types of shots would probably help

Most other compacts will give similar results, though usually as the price goes up you'll get brighter lens and better performance at higher iso settings. A dslr would probably be what you'd need though if you really want to get cleaner faster shots in low light, won't really get the same performance from any compact camera. They start at about 550euro