How do I take a good night time/ low light photo??

Question

I just got a Nikon D80 a few weeks ago and I am still trying to learn to use it well. For the life of me I cannot get an image to turn out at night or indoors, when I need to use the flash. The images are always blurry!

I understand that it needs to use a wider aperture and a slower shutter time, but still! What am I doing wrong?!!!

Thanks!!

Answer 1

If you are getting blurry pictures you are probably capturing motion due to a slow shutter speed. Subject motion, camera movement or both.  Opening up the aperature as wide as you can will let you shoot at a higher shutter speed. A tripod or a VR lens will reduce camera motion letting you shoot at a slower shutter speed without blurring,

And you can alway use the flash You need to remember though the guide number on the built in flash is only 13/42 at ISO 100. Not bad but not terribly powerful the SB 800 has a GN 38/125 (at 35mm) to 56/184 (at 105mm) (ISO 100, m/ft.)

The formula for GN is GN= f-stop X distance. Or Distance = GN divided by f Stop. So if your widest aperature is say 4.5 13 divided by 4.5 is 2.8 meters or around 9 feet. (at an ISO of 100)

You can bump the iso up to get the flash to work further out. As long as you don't go to extremes with this you will not have alot of noise issues

so try setting the ISO as 200 or 400, using the flash or a tripod ( or both), getting aperature wide so you can use a faster shutter speed.

Good luck

Answer 2

Use a tri-pod

Answer 3

use a tripod and set your camera to either night or indoors

Answer 4

Without seeing the actual image and knowing what your shutter speed and aperture is it is hard to say what the issue is.

First of all I am assuming you are in full manual mode because you mention that you are adjusting both the aperture and the shutter speed.  

What I am assuming you have done is perhaps made a light meter reading of the ambient light and adjusted the shutter speed to that light.  You then extend the flash and fire.  However after you clicked the shutter release button and the flash has fired the shutter stays open for a long time because your ambient light reading was something like 1/2 second or greater.  If your images appear overexposed and blurry then there is your problem.  

I'd suggest you post a example photo so as we may read the EXIF data regarding what your shutterspeed and aperture is.  

Answer 5

In addition to widening the aperture, you may have to use a tri-pod and adjust the film speed settings.

Answer 6

Just put your camera on a tripod cos the shutter speed will be slow, set your camera for aperture priority (A on the Mode Dial), set a medium aperture say f8. If you only have a slow lens (f3.5 - f4) the auto focus may need some help from you, so manual focus. And press the shutter it really is that easy. Provided the shutter speed is not slower than 30 seconds (your cameras limit) then its automatic.

Don't use flash, it only has a range of about 5 feet, set the ISO for 100 to keep quality. If there is noise reduction in your menu (there probably is) then turn it on. What it will do is say your shutter speed is 10 seconds, it will take another 'blank' shot with shutter closed to record the noise then subtract one from the other, result, a night time shot with very little sensor noise.

Chris

Answer 7

The problem might be that you are shooting too slow hand holding the camera.  Usually (the rule of thumb), if you are using a lens that is 75mm and you are zooming all the way you can't shoot any slower than 1/80 of a second.

Because of the low light the camera has to compensate and reduce the speed of the shutter.

Try this, hand hold your camera and set the shutter to 1/20 of a second and snap a picture (indoors), then try 1/40, 1/80, 1/125.  You will notice that as the speed increase the bluriness decreases but so does the light.

So, you will need to increase the sensitivity of the ISO to 400 or 800 and either use a flash or a tripod

Hope this helps and good luck!