Re: Look Ma, No Flash

Dan Bracuk wrote:
> Last week I tried something new - new for me that is. I took all my
> photos with natural light only. The good news is that the good ones
> were much better than they would have been with flash. No shadows and
> no backscatter.
>
> The bad news is that I left the camera on fully automatic, except for
> the no flash part. That meant that in pretty well 100% of the low
> light situations, the shutter speed, or whatever you call that with
> digital cameras was too slow and my pictures were blurry.

I'll bet fully automatic was the right choice anyway, since your camera
is probably programmed with a bias toward faster shutter speeds. I
think these consumer cameras are programmed wth a bias to reduce blur
caused by motion of the camera or subject. I have the same problems in
low light with my Olympus 4040z.

In mid-depths of 30 to 60 fsw, my camera is often at widest aperture
and it chooses slow shutter speeds of 1/20th to 1/2 second.

I'm getting a few decent shots in those low light conditions by
steadying the camera as much as possible, as I'm sure you are.

I can sometimes get an acceptably clear shot even with shutter speeds
as long as 1/6 of a second if I get a little further away, stop
breathing, get slack in the flag line and place my fin tips or knees on
the bottom.

> Next trip, manual f-stop and shutter speed settings. Anybody got any
> suggestions for something that might work? The camera is a 4
> megapixel Sony point and shoot.

I agree with Kari about experimenting a little with your cameras
settings for manual or shutter control.

Also, to find out what your camera's automatic mode is doing, try to
find some low light settings that cause your camera, in automatic mode,
to just barely drop into the widest aperture. Note the shutter speed
and then switch to manual or shutter priority and compare different
settings. That might tell you if there is an advantage to controlling
the shutter speed yourself.

Eventually, my solution will be to get a camera with better low-light
performance. If you find a cheaper solution, let me know. 8^)

HTH.

Dave C