Options for low light photography?

Here is an interesting challenge.  Twice in the last few months I have been unable to take any kind of decent photos because of really poor lighting and not having any kind of suitably fast lens.  Basically these are family activities, watching the blood moon and visiting a dark and dingy museum which begged for some photos.  It has to be a semi-wide angle lens (~35mm if shooting with a “full frame” camera) that is compatible with either my Canon DSLR or m43 system.  I also need so form of image stabilization as I will not always have time for a tripod and my family are used to me telling them to “stand still”!

I’m thinking about Voigtländer’s 17.5/0.95 with my E-M5 (I prefer manual focus when it is really dark) or for my 5DIII, Canon’s 35/2 IS or even the new Tamron’s 35/1.8.  Would the extra real estate of the Canon sensor compensate for the relatively slower lens when compared to the m43 combo? Are there better options?

Alternatively this could just be a bad case of GAS which will hopefully pass.

Cheers,

Jim

It is important that your system be stabilized for the examples you gave (if you handhold). Your FF will be better than 4/3...if you want GAS, other systems may be better.

Traditional options are flash (or other artificial lighting systems) and tripod. They still work and are widely used. These days it is sensor with good high ISO performance if flash or tripod is not preferable. But if it's really dark, flash and/or tripod is still the way to go most if not all the time. Then it also depends on the final usage of the images. For example, small prints "hide" noise better then larger ones do. One's noise tolerance level might be a factor, too, in making the final decision. Personally, fast lenses would be my last option.

"Traditional options are flash (or other artificial lighting systems) and tripod. They still work and are widely used." No stuff. So let's image the following: Hey kids, please all stand still while I set up my tripod and then my ambiance-destroying flash. Please wait... Oh just a minute, that sign says I can't use a tripod. Don't worry I can still use a flash. Nothing like a flash to destroy your night vision when watching any outdoor activities especially lunar eclipse. CDhan here is a hint - if I wanted to or were able to use a tripod &/or flash would I be asking about fast lenses?

Apologies in advance,

Jim

hullyjr wrote:"Traditional options are flash (or other artificial lighting systems) and tripod. They still work and are widely used."  No stuff. So let's image the following: Hey kids, please all stand still while I set up my tripod and then my ambiance-destroying flash.  Please wait... Oh just a minute, that sign says I can't use a tripod. Don't worry I can still use a flash.  Nothing like a flash to destroy your night vision when watching any outdoor activities especially lunar eclipse.  CDhan here is a hint - if I wanted to or were able to use a tripod &/or flash would I be asking about fast lenses?

Apologies in advance,

Jim

You're asking for options, are you not? My apologies for not being able to read your mind, Jim. You have certainly given more info about what you had in mind in this reply of yours. Still, people do use flash and tripod when allowed. Beside, there're ways to use flash quick and easy. And there're also ways to use flash that is not ambiance-destroying. Without further info from you, I can only assume that you did not know about that.

Just trying to help here, Jim. If trying to help you requires the ability to read your mind to begin with, please state so in your posts from now on.

hullyjr wrote:"Please wait... Oh just a minute, that sign says I can't use a tripod. Don't worry I can still use a flash.  Nothing like a flash to destroy your night vision when watching any outdoor activities especially lunar eclipse.  CDhan here is a hint - if I wanted to or were able to use a tripod &/or flash would I be asking about fast lenses?

Apologies in advance,

Jim

You are probably 10-30 years too early in asking this question with those conditions using visible light. None of the current crop of cameras, with any existing lens, can shoot acceptable candids outdoors, during a total lunar eclipse without a tripod or auxiliary lighting in my opinion. (Notice, I didn't say flash as in "on camera" flash. Given the situation, which is much like trying to shoot a wedding reception, it requires off camera lights to help the camera and to freeze movement.) 

On my recent travels to Africa, I attempted to take pictures around the campfire with an F1.8 lens while maxing out the ISO at about 52,800. I was still having to shoot at 1/40 or less to get under exposed images. The camera could NOT auto focus at all, so I ended up having to manually focus and setting the aperture to F2.8 to "get a little depth of focus" as I was guessing with the focus because I really couldn't see through the view finder. My framing was guesses at best. What was in focus usually had motion blur. The rest had lots of cutoff parts of people. 

If I really wanted to get  shots around the camp fire, I would have setup lights with gels that simulated the light of the campfire. (Did you know that camp fires have a white balance UNDER 2000K?) The fire itself was bright enough to balance with the lights and the people around the fire into acceptable images. And camp fires are a lot brighter than the way I would setup activities during a lunar eclipse. Actually having pictures that include stars requires multiple second exposures and a stopped down lens if you want a foreground and the stars both looking like there in focus so that definitely needs a tripod!

I don't even think that 10 years will be long enough to get to a situation where a mirror-less (and it has to be a mirror-less since you need an electronic viewfinder to see enough to compose images) will be good enough to take candids outdoors on a moonless night. (Which is what a total lunar eclipse is like in terms of ambient light.) It is possible that you had other "artificial lights" on during the event. In studio terms, those are known as "hot light" or "continuous lights" since they don't strobe. However the amount of lights added while still saving one's night vision and shooting with current technology cameras will still find you either shooting too slow to freeze action and unable to focus due to the extremely narrow DOF for the existing fast lenses.

When I shoot at a "night sky party", I bring a low powered flashlight to hang under my tripod. This puts a small pool of light on the ground that shows where the tripod legs are. Since the light is low powered and pointing down, it doesn't impact night vision and prevents people from tripping over the tripod. If you really wanted to capture something under the conditions stated above, you might be able to do it with a video camera set to night vision with an Infrared light assist. That would allow to you see what is happening, get things on camera and not goof up anyone's night vision. I don't think there are any acceptable still cameras that can use Infrared in this way yet though I might be wrong there. But notice, even with the video camera, you have to have additional lights to make it work.

The new EM-5 MkII does a pretty neat job with it's night scene option, it takes and stacks and aligns 5 frames in succession. I tried it on some city light scenes and it worked pretty well. It's not good enough to record the Milky Way with an f2.8 lens but expect it could shoot under the light of a full moon.

Thanks Tony that's great info but I need to clarify further. I wanted to photograph the family watching (but not photographing) the lunar activities. I live in an area with plenty of ambient light (ugly green street lights). I have a 6" reflector from our local library to follow the celestial bodies. Most museums ban tripods & flash (despite the lack of any scientific merit) but there is usually enough light if you have fast lenses &/or built-in stabilization. These are spontaneous events where I don't have a lot of time. My wife will undoubtedly ask "can you photograph these events with your expensive camera gear"!

My point was the performance of a camera with a sensor 4x times larger versus a camera with a lens roughly 2 stops faster. Should be a wash but there are other factors to consider and I was looking for practical advice.

Cheers,

Jim

Jim just a suggestion for family events in the 'dark' but have you looked at ledlight panels something like this...

http://www.d-d-photographics.com.au/pro ... ED308.html

The constant even light would be something the family could adapt to easily and would give you freedom to use your current equipment and lens set up or you could get a new lens as needed. If you do macro work the light could have an added use for you and it is great indoors as a portrait setup.

I would absolutely stick with you full frame DSLR for low light, but unfortunately lenses 35 or wider will max out at f1.4. The new Canon 35mm mkII is the one you need to suppress your GAS. Although the Tamron will probably fit your needs better, providing people are not moving around too much.

Jim, I was shooting the supermoon this weekend from NJ, looking at NYC. There were plenty of people using all sorts of gear. My wife took a snapshot with her iPhone that she posted on FB. If you look at the image at 100%, there is motion blur, but small sized on the web it looks great and lots of people loved it.

The moon once up in the sky a bit is an extremely bright object, you can easily get away with handheld shots of just the moon, but the rest would then become a silhouette. The big problem would be to get the exposure right for both the moon and the foreground. No way to do that without a tripod/flash and combining the two images.

For indoor low-light photos, esp of people standing together, I found a wide open lens at say f2.8 or more, ISO 1600 and 1/30s to be quite enough in most situations, even with low  ambient lighting as in a banquet hall during dinner. For high ISO, the Canon is just as good as any other sensor. In that sense, it would certainly perform better than a smaller sensor. Having a lens with IS is a huge advantage too.

Pradeep

Primus wrote: The big problem would be to get the exposure right for both the moon and the foreground. No way to do that without a tripod/flash and combining the two images.

You would need a dynamic range of about 30 stops to do that which would mean 32 bit per pixel image capture, in other words a camera that captures true HDR images in a single RAW file.  We are a loooooonnnnnnnggggggggg way away from that

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Primus wrote: The big problem would be to get the exposure right for both the moon and the foreground. No way to do that without a tripod/flash and combining the two images.

You would need a dynamic range of about 30 stops to do that which would mean 32 bit per pixel image capture, in other words a camera that captures true HDR images in a single RAW file.  We are a loooooonnnnnnnggggggggg way away from that

Exactly!!

You've got two or more elements in the photograph that require different exposure settings but you can only take a shot with one exposure setting. Either you take multiple shots and merge them together in post, or you add light so that all elements could look well with one shot in the final photos. That's true IMO even if you have a camera good with high ISO and f.95 or whatever lenses. Just no way to get around it. Problem with using super fast lens is you may not get enough depth of field hence personally it would be the last option I'd pick.

Yup, the dynamic range of the scene can not be tamed with a faster lens, whether or not it can be recorded is a function of the sensor, not the lens.  However the original question, I believe, was recording foreground and the Blood Moon which is much less of a challenge from a dynamic range perspective, even when done in the dead of night, but to do that you would need relatively clean ISO 1,000,000 or higher and a very fast lens to do it without any motion blur on the part of the moon or the foreground if there is any wind and movable objects present and if you want the moon to be larger than a very small point, and then the problem becomes depth of field if you want a bigger moon.  This discussion highlights, very much, the box we are painted into as photographers and the compromises we have to make, which in this case, is likely to do the sot in multiple exposures.

For all practical purposes the only way to combine moon and FG elements is to take two exposures.  If you add in handheld, you are using wide lenses to allow hand holding and the moon then reduces to a point so it quickly becomes impractical.

Regarding choice of camera to use the full frame seems to make sense however you need to add IS to the equation and also special modes like multiexposure night scene modes if they are available.  On absolute terms there is no difference in shutter speed requirements at the same final image magnification, which is another way of saying you don't get to handhold slower with the smaller focal length M4/3 lenses because you magnify the final image more.

So on the Canon you might get a 4 stop IS benefit depending on the lens but an EM-5 MkII has 5 stop in body stabilisation.  The Canon gathers 4x as much light from camera surface area which is a 2 stop signal advantage, however the night scene mode adds and aligns 5 exposures together so gets 5x the light which is 2 1/3 stops more light(by my calc) .  So starting from the same basic shutter speed the Canon gets 4 +2 = 6 stops advantage and the Oly gets 5 + 2 1/3= 7 1/3 stops.  This also assumes the same aperture.

On the original question the Canon gives you a 2 stop noise advantage so the lens needs to 2 stops faster on the m4/3 camera to get equal signal, but your then working at a very wide aperture with shallow DOF and probably vignetting and corner sharpness problems.  So by the calc above you are near equal (plus 1 1/3 to the Oly) but with a penalty from shooting a very fast lens wide open.

So the Oly slips ahead if you can have the object sit still long enough to use the night scene mode, but it's only a 1 1/3 stop overall advantage.  The camera seems to set the shutter speed at 1/10 sec and wide open at ISO12500 when it's very dark and it uses faster SS and  lower ISO when there's more light.  So 1/10 x 5 = 1/2 sec exposure equivalent.  So the Oly and full frame more or less even up (1 1/3 stops is not  a huge advantage) but only if you use the night scene mode if that is available and you take the claimed IS advantage as fact.

But is you do use an f1.0 +/- lens the inbody stabilisation then gives you an advantage as the fast full frame lenses like the 35mm f1.4 have no IS and the 17mm f0.95 lens you mention would give give you a 2 stop advantage not obtainable on the Canon assuming you are using the 35mm f2 IS.  Yes you could put a similar lens on the Canon but no IS so plus  2 stops of photons but minus 4 stops of light from shutter speed.  The other advantage of M4/3 at least on EM-5 MkII is focus peaking which works quite well even when it's quite dark for getting focus dialled in where using a DSLR manually would be very hit or miss.

But I still wonder when you use an aperture of between f1.0 and lets say f2.0 are you going to get enough DOF to get your forgound in sharp enough focus to make the image worthwhile? People rarely stand in straight lines, parallel to the sensor when taking candid's. So getting sharp focus when using even a 35mm lens will be a challenge, as I assume that the people will need to be fairly close to the camera otherwise they will appear fairly small in the image if some distance from the camera.

Thanks, I never expected to incorporate the moon in any realistic fashion for the reasons already discussed and I have to live with the limited dof. I used a 600/2x/7DII for the actual eclipse which worked well until the clouds arrived. In a few weeks we will again be at an observatory, this time on Hawaii, hence my interest in this type of photography. My son is obsessed with planets/moons etc so we will be probably be doing a lot more of these nocturnal events.

Again thanks,

Jim

If you are shooting people, I don't think IS makes much difference because your shutter speed will have to be high enough to account for their small movements. I would suggest the Canon 50mm f1.4 or the 16-35 f2.8 L lens. I have had good luck with the latter on a Canon 6D taking interior shots in dark cathedrals without a tripod or flash, even using handheld HDR. See for instance my shots in cathedrals and the salt mine in Krakow here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jdstrung/ ... 6090458474

The EXIF data is shown and if no shutter speed is shown, that means that the image is HDR.

The new Tamron 15-30 f2.8 with IS is also a posibility.

E.J. Peiker wrote:Yup, the dynamic range of the scene can not be tamed with a faster lens, whether or not it can be recorded is a function of the sensor, not the lens.  However the original question, I believe, was recording foreground and the Blood Moon which is much less of a challenge from a dynamic range perspective, even when done in the dead of night, but to do that you would need relatively clean ISO 1,000,000 or higher and a very fast lens to do it without any motion blur on the part of the moon or the foreground if there is any wind and movable objects present and if you want the moon to be larger than a very small point, and then the problem becomes depth of field if you want a bigger moon.  This discussion highlights, very much, the box we are painted into as photographers and the compromises we have to make, which in this case, is likely to do the sot in multiple exposures.

You mean like this?   Blood moon eclipse, stars, airglow, mountains and yellow aspen at peak color:
http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/ga ... 1200s.html

I needed 1 minutes exposures at f/2.8.

Remember ISO does not change sensitivity of the sensor nor how much light is gathered.  Only exposure time and and lens aperture control how much light is gathered.  ISO just sets a range to digitize.   For example, ISO 1600 means digitizing about 200 photons / square micron if the sensor was 100% efficient.  So at ISO 1,000,000, that would be a range of 0 to 0.32 photon per square micron.  So with big pixels like 8 microns, that would be 0 to 20 photon range, or 18% gray of only 3.6 photons, and a S/N of less than 2.

Photons are finite, and at night there are very few photons.

Roger