Taking Vacation Photos Indoors

I've noticed that just about everyone now has a nice DSLR that they take on vacation. The relative affordability of a basic DSLR means it's become a pretty popular hobby that's accessible to a lot more people.  Good stuff.

What surprises me is to see the number of flashes going off on those DSLRs into the dark abyss of a dome 50-100 meters high. When you have a camera capable of the light gathering that today's DSLRs are capable of,  it's definitely worth it to take a couple extra little steps to get shot that captures that landmark exactly like you captured it in your memory. It may sound scary but it's not all that bad and worth a try.

First step is take that camera off of Auto and move it Manual--you can easily move it right back when you are outside in the sunshine again, but you may find that you actually like controlling the exposure yourself.  Today's cameras are better than ever, but the vision and the creativity is all ours.  

I usually adjust shutter speed first when taking still pictures in low light(all of this goes out the door if you are taking action shots inside a dark stadium).   Take your shutter speed down to the slowest speed that you can handhold without shaking--shutter speed is a fraction of a second so the bigger the number, the faster the speed: 4000=1/4000 sec,  2000=1/2000 sec,  etc.  This will vary by how steady your hand is and whether you are using a telephoto or regular or wide-angle lens.  Telephotos have very little room for error on camera shake and are often heavier too.  I don't have a steady hand and could only shoot my 3 lb Canon 70-200 at a minimum of 1/250th of a second but the much lighter 50mm at 1/60th of a second(sometimes with obvious blur from camera shake).  My new Fuji mirrorless is so light that if I brace my elbow securely against my body, check the wind and hold my breath, I can shoot it at 1/30th.  The slower you can get the shutter speed, the more light you let into the camera.

Next is your aperture setting.  Just like shutter speed, the goal is letting in as much light as possible.   For aperture, the smaller the number the more light it lets in--a lens at f/1.2 aperture lets in significantly more light than it does at f/4 or f/5.6.  This is where lenses become a little finicky--fast glass (capable of letting in a lot of light- f/1.2, f/1.8 etc) is more expensive and most zoom lenses are a bit slow. Most zoom lenses that people are walking around with though have at least a 4 so take your aperture down to f/4.  If you have a lens with f/2.8 take it there and if you've invested in a lens that is even faster than that, well you probably aren't reading this.  You will probably have to play around with this setting a bit though because aperture directly impacts your depth of field--1.2 is extremely shallow which may not matter too much on a dome 100 meters up, but will throw everything but your focal plane out of focus on anything nearby.  Since this is bit more complicated than this post was meant to be, I'd say start at the f/2.8 or f/4.0 that the lens is capable of and if you find too many things in the background have more blur (bokeh) than you wanted, try f/4.5. 

Finally, I adjust ISO last.  Adjusting aperture and shutter speed impacts things like depth of field or capturing action shots without movement but adjusting ISO impacts image quality and introduces noise which is why it's my last adjustment. I keep my camera on the lowest ISO possible but will adjust it to capture a photo when needed.  In this case, low number actually means low.  For my Canon the lowest is ISO 100 and for my Fuji it's ISO 200.    ISO allows you to capture things that you think are in complete darkness surprisingly well and today's cameras are only getting better at light gathering so don't be afraid to bump it up--I've been going all the way up to ISO 4000 when inside churches and landmarks.   

So all of that blah blah translates into what?   Here is a shot I took on automatic--this is pretty much what the church looked like to the naked eye.  I let my camera think through what it wanted to do minus the flash that kept popping up.  I couldn't bring myself to use a flash inside the church but if I'd let the camera fire it off like it wanted to, it would have just highlighted the candle and made everything behind it even darker.

Here I took the same shot on manual--it's a little grainy but that can be adjusted in Lightroom.  Shutter speed is 1/30th of a second and aperture was f/2.8.  ISO was bumped up to 1600.  Use the light meter in your viewfinder and try and get that exposure line right in the middle to figure out what ISO you need.   It's a digital camera--if it's too dark or overexposed, adjust your ISO and try again.  I tried exposing this for all areas for the purpose of this posting but you may actually want your background to remain darker so the candles pop more--lower your ISO and take that photo as many times as you need to get what you are looking for.

If you've been inside the Baptistry in Florence you know that it's pretty dark in there but you'd never guess it from these photos.  Set your camera manually to gather light instead of using a fill flash and you'll have people thinking you took your photos in daylight.  Shooting manually indoors also allows you capture some of those shots where flash photography is not allowed.  Bonus. 

Just a warning that you may come to love all this control you have over a contraption and find yourself seeking more control in other areas of your life.  Before you know it, you'll end up with a manual transmission.