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Super low lighting and grainyness?

I

IvoryOasis

So, I am wanting to go with a super low lighting being lit by candles and small electric lights in a dark room (mainly because it is in my apartment and I don't want people to know it is just in some apartment hehe).

But, after doing a test with some candles on my desk, I found that the pools of light were a kind of nice look.

The problem? Grainyness!

I have the ISO set to the max (I am using a canon 7d , so maybe just not the right camera for this type of thing?).

I was thinking I could direct some more lights directly at the figure (mr. bunny) through electric lights hidden in junk on the table? Maybe that would bounce more light into the camera and take away some grainyness?

Here is a screenshot of the problem.

Comp10001210.jpg
 
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Your ISO being set to max is the main issue here. The 7D can do quite well in low light situations but with lower ISO's.

You can do different things to get the effect you want. If i understand correctly, you want your backgrounds to be black so we can not tell that you are shooting in an apartment. And to get that graininess away, we need to lower the ISO but still get good exposure.

What you can do is keep your shooting area/subject as far away from the walls as possible and hang black cloth in the background. Then you can illuminate your subject with more light and lower the ISO on ur camera. Dont throw any light on ur backgrounds. Do some tests and find a balance where the grain is acceptable to you and you still have moody and dark lighting. The effectiveness of this will depend on how big ur apartment is and how far the background can be.

On the other side, dont mess around with the shutter for longer exposure time because it will just cause ur image to smear.

And i kind of assumed that your aperture is as open as can be. If not, open up your aperture to let in more light but remember your depth of field will get shallow. That will change the look of ur image if u wanted more things in focus but it will have the added benefit of blurring the background and us not being able to tell we are in an apartment.
 
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Yeah, that'll happen with really high ISO. I might also recommend (if you aren't already) checking out a prime, so that you can get a nice low f-stop. Like Ernest mentioned, this will decrease your depth of field, so if shallow depth of field is not what you want, you can use a wide lens to counteract the lower f-stop.
 
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Hmmm, i want to see it now.

maybe ill watch it tmrw

EDIT: oh wait, its a romantic comedy, no thanks.
i only watch those if i hear very good things abt them
from ppl i know who know something abt movies.

so, wats ur take on it?
 
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Ohhh, thanks so much! I'll try again with different ISO's. If that doesn't work, I'll try the other things (other than the f-stop, but only because I have no clue what that is -,.,- haha).
 
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@ROC: watched it earlier. liked it! havent posted my thoughts on it yet. will be doing that later

@Ivory: read up on aperture on wikipedia. ull understand f stops after that. ur aperture is very important for controlling light which is what ur trying to do here.

basically:

numbers like f1.4, f5.6 etc are the f stops

aperture is the hole in ur lens

larger aperture means lower f stop

so larger hole like f1.4 lets in more light

smaller hole like f11 lets in less light

so if u get a lens which is say a 50mm f1.4, it means you can get more light in compared to a 50mm 1.8, but u can stop both down to f5.6 or whatever u want to stop it down to.

(read up on this stuff bc theres a lot more info to it. eg size of the aperture will not be the same on 50mm 1.4 and an 85mm 1.4)
 
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IvoryOasis said:
Ohhh, thanks so much! I'll try again with different ISO's. If that doesn't work, I'll try the other things (other than the f-stop, but only because I have no clue what that is -,.,- haha).
Click to expand...

F-stop is your aperture, and if you're using a 7D, you REALLY need to know what it is, and how to use it. I wrote a quick tutorial on the basics of DSLR. I wrote it with the T2i in mind, but adapting everything I wrote to make sense for the 7D is only a matter of figuring out where the button is, cuz the control layouts are different.

http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=25092
 
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Ohh, now those settings make a lot more sense! Thanks a bunch (and for the link, cracker :) I have only had the camera for a couple days (borrowing it from a friend), so getting over the learning curve still.
 
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Lol, here we go again!

Joking! Actually no we dont because what you said is correct. It can be 1/50 or 1/60.

For people who are still learning and we know the OP is because of the aperture thing (nothing wrong with that), to keep things simple i recommend 1/60 till they learn the nuances bc with 1/50 they may have a flickering light problem in the states.
 
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Workarounds:

It sounds like you're serious, so listen up.

1. Movie candles have 3 wicks to triple the brightness. Either make them yourself, or find the (expensive) professional variety.

2. You can flag off some fill so it doesn't ruin the "pool fo light" effect you're going for.

3. This video "grain" is better known as noise. It's because the sensor isn't resolving anything in particular, and it is "starved" of light. Mostly it's blue channel light, as most of these sensors are balanced for daylight (5000-6000K) and not for candle or yellowish tungsten bulbs.

4. Some ISOs work better on the Canons, and are around the multiples of 320: 640, 1250, and 2500. The others, not so much.

5. Some fill and/or bounce may get your exposure up to something usable. Do tests.
 
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