Most people buy a digital SLR camera and immediately put it into auto mode which is usually a green square. Learning how to shoot in manual scares people but it's important to learn how to so you have more control over your photos. I'm here to teach you how to photograph in manual in a dark setting. Think of ISO as light or exposure you are adding to your photo. The higher the number, the more light you are adding to an image. The only problem with adding too much ISO is your images will become more grainy. Think of grain as noise or a television channel that doesn't come in clear. Inside a dark room I bring my ISO's up from 3200 to 6400 and sometimes higher. Don't worry about staying around this number because you can remove the noise later on in post production using a program called Adobe Lightroom. Once you have your ISO's set you can set your shutter speed. Shutter speed is the speed on how fast the camera will capture your subject. Depending on how fast your subject is moving determines on how fast of a shutter speed you need. 1/8 to 1/30 is a slow shutter speed. For capturing people moving you want a shutter speed of 1/100 and higher. It's okay to use a slower shutter speed if you're using a tripod or if your subject is not moving. The last thing to set is your f stop or aperture. This number determines how sharp everything becomes. If the number is small like 1.4 to 2.8 one thing will be tack sharp and the rest of the image will be blurred. Take this photo for example. The background is really blurry called bokeh but the bride is tack sharp. This was photographed at 1.4.
You need to figure out where the light source is coming from when you're indoors. If you just bump your ISO's and don't use a flash, you're subject will become very yellow because indoor lights give off a warm glow. When I'm inside a dark church I use a flash and still crank my ISO's to illuminate my subject. The flash I use gives off a white light which will be better for the color balance later on in post production and will remove a lot of the yellow from the incandescent lights. If it's one person I'm trying to capture I keep my f stop from 2.8 to 3.5. If it's two people I keep my f stop at 3.2 to 4.0. If you kept your f stop at 2.8 for two people, one of them would slightly be out of focus depending on the vertical plane they are on. Meaning if one person is ahead of the other and you focused on the one closes to you, the one behind would be slightly out of focus. Shooting at f 4.0 would keep both more in focus. Inside darker settings I tend to photograph in RAW as opposed to JPEG which allows me to make more lighting adjustments later on in post if my lighting was horribly off, which it usually isn't but it gives me more forgiveness say the flash doesn't fire for some reason or the flash gives off too much brightness I can bring back the details more than photographing with JPEG.
Here's an example of shooting inside a dark church and using two off camera flashes with pocket wizards. More on this later but just trying to show you that you need a light source when you're inside a dark room. This will take the strain off of the grain you get from using high ISO's as my ISO's in this image are around 1000. I used an f stop from 5.6 to 7 for this image because all of the bridesmaids are on slightly different planes. Two flashes also help to illuminate all of the bridesmaids as well. One flash on my camera would be okay but I shoot the flashes into two umbrellas that really illuminate the subjects.
This next image is about capturing the moment perfectly and someone's point and shoot camera when off exactly at that time in the background. I did use a flash and put it into black and white in post production. my f stop was between 3.5 and 4. this is why the bride and father of the bride are both tack sharp. The gear that I use indoors is a Canon 5d Mark 3 equipped with a 24-70 f/2.8L lens with a Canon 580 EX 2. If you have any questions about photographing in manual mode indoors, feel free to message me at jayson@jaysonsphotography.com. For those wondering where manual mode is, it's the big M on your camera on the left dial.
To recap. Manual mode on a DSLR camera. You walk into a dark room.
Bump your ISO's to 3200 - 6400
Shutter speed 1/100 - 1/200
Flash - Canon 580 EX or 580 EX 2
F stop or Aperture f/2.8 to 5.6 depending on your subject
I hope this helps. When I was at Disney recently I was explaining to a woman how to photograph in this mode. Here's an example of bumping ISO's and shooting at 2.8 with a shutter speed around 1/100 to 1/200. Every situation is different so I do take some text shots to make sure I'm nailing the exposure and the more you practice with manual settings the more you will realize what you are trying to achieve with each image.
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