An early Halloween party with all the usual sparklers, glow sticks and costumes. I decided to take the camera out and try a few experimental photos using sparklers etc quickly switching to the Canon 50mm lens in an attempt to achieve some photos that were actually in focus.
The camera really struggled with autofocus mode and I am wondering if I was shooting in the wrong mode altogether.
The more successful shots (and the photo above is still badly out of focus) were captured in Aperture priority mode.
I tried to use manual mode but found gauging the shutter speed to very difficult with the rapid changes in light level (from sparklers).
Any advice on low light photography would be greatly appreciated. I had high hopes but little or no success. Thanks to all of you who replied on Twitter, a special mention to @falmouthdesign for this link (I wish I had of read it earlier).
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Right, you’ve got several things to overcome.
At F1.8 DoF (ie the amount in focus) is not a lot, so correct focus is crucial. Turn off all focus points and pick one focus point. The centre one is best, but in these cases I’d choose upper middle/leftish for the top shot, top right focus point for the other to bring the focus on the face. Keep it on AF Server not one shot, so the focus keeps adjusting. Wise to keep the kids fairly still to help.
Second problem the metering is going to get thrown widely out, you start in pitch black the camera says no light so long exposure, then you stick a huge bright light in. Good way to counter this is to stick camera in AV mode, come close and get the camera to meter off the face whilst they hold the sparkler roughly where they would (which is the bit you generally want metered correctly, see what the camera says at the F stop, switch to manual, press the AV+/- button and turn the wheel to adjust your F stop to match, let go then change the shutter speed to what the meter had said before.
Then when you stand back, the camera will be ignoring the bright sparkler and will be just going with what you’d metered off the face.
Also the 1.8 is not very good in low light, it cannot AF and keeps hunting. That is why I chose the 1.4USM, which is slightly better under difficult circumstances.