Advice Re Taking pictures in Dark environment

oldboy

Hey Folks,

First off I better explain that I am no photographer

Bought myself a "point n shoot" Canon Ixus 950 Digital camera last year and very happy with it.

I am off to Sonar in Barcelona this Friday. Basically an indoor dance music festival. The last time I went all my pictures I took came out blurred and too dark, lots of trails....... with the flash on there were useless, quite washed out and never really captured the atmospheric lighting.

The environment would be simliar to a nightclub, but imagine warehouse size with 10,000 plus people. Lots of ambient neon lights etc. Similar to lighting at a club or a gig, some of it quite well done. I also would like to take photos of the dj's on stage but again lighting was an issue.

What way would you guys advise I setup the camera to try and get some decent pics ? It has quite a few settings but all mean very little to me. I have been reading some photography websites but they seemed geared towards digital SLR and SLR cameras.

Thanks for your help folks !!

Alanstrainor

Are there any ISO settings on it? You would need to set them to be as high as possible, i'm not familiar with your camera so it might not even be possible. It really is a tricky situation with a point and shoot, the flash will only work for illuminating people or things that are close.

Ricky91t

Might want to download CHDK can give you manual controls i think,Set your camera to 1/60 shutter the lowest aperture (eg.2.8,3.5,4) whatever your cameras is then put the iso (if you can)up to 600/800

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
Thats the link

Set it in manual and experiment
When shooting the neons etc \turn off the face detecytion
WHen shooting the Djs turn it on.
Just checking youtube and it seems pretty acurate

AlanMooneyPhoto

Hey oldboy,
to be honest you're not going to get really good shots in low light with the ixus 950, its got noticeable noise at iso 400 and gets ridiculous noise above 800, just try set the iso around 600ish and try to take shots of scenes that are well lit by the lighting provided at the venue.
best of luck with it,
alan

oldboy

Sound.

Thanks alan and co. I'll fiddle with the ISO and shutter speeds and see what I can do. You're right maybe i'll just aim to take pics where the light is good.

Fingers crossed, i might try a few experiments tonight, the state i'll prob end up in at the gig i wont be doing much camera adjustment

Thanks again all.

Majik_Imaje

EXPERIMENTS !!! !! ??? I mean no offense, I am just trying to illustrate something very basic about photography that most new bees are not aware of..

what experiment ??? There are only 3 things that happen when you release that shutter to create in imaje.

1. Image is too light
2. Image is too dark
3. Image is right on !!

Well now in this new instant digital age, you can see the results instantly. Whew.. good thing you do not have to go in there and use FILM.

you should have no problem.. PROVIDED you have read the instruction booklet and know how to use that camera to ITS FULL potential .

Good luck. post some images with shutter speeds or aperature if possible.

Then we will move on from there with your 'experiments' !! :pac: