K-m in low light situation

Trying to learn how to take pictures in the low light...best settings...best way to decrease noise...something I seem to have a fair bit of????
Here is my night photo...hand held...Called it ..."Lit for Saint Nik"




Focal length....50.mmm
Exposure time...... .300s(1/3
Apture...........f/40
ISO..............8000
Exposure......Aperture Priority

Very nice JudithAnn, but yes, I can see noise and a bit of blur! My advice is to use a tripod, with the ISo set to 100. (Use the 2sec self timer so the camera is absolutely steady!) Without a tripod, you need to find something solid to hold the camera against and use a higher ISO to keep the exposure time reasonable.

JudithAnn,

If you want less noise, a lower ISO might help (at the expense of a longer exposure). Therefore, what Will said above is good advice - a tripod is the best way to make it all work for you.

The rule of thumb for hand held shots I picked up on is that the minimum shutter speed is no less than one over the focal length used. That way you maximise the chance of avoiding blur, and maximise your image sharpness.

Your FL was 50 mm, so 1/50 is then your minimum handheld shutter speed. As an aside, this also makes using longer teles fairly ambitious in low light, without a suitable rest (think 1/200 or 1/300 for eg, and so on...).

Hope this helps, and all the best.

Hi Judith, in addition to the good advice from Pentaxophile and i-Berg I also wonder about the f/40 aperture. It seems very small, and may add to the general softness. Most lenses have a 'sweet spot' of maximum sharpness. This is often in the f8 to f16 range. At apertures smaller or larger than that the image quality will suffer to one degree or another.

The tiny aperture also lets in less light, which may be why you had to go as high as 8000 ISO.

Hi JudithAnn, all the advice here is spot on.

I just wonder whether you perhaps mistakenly added the odd zero to your shooting info because as far as I know the K-m is capable of 3200 ISO as a maximum (my daughter has one as you know).

Colourful shot by the way

Tim,

I wonder whether a decimal place was missing in the aperture specs there perhaps? Speculating that an 'f40' lens might tempt Joe Fraunhofer to return and have words with us about diffraction...

I think you might be right Greytop and iBerg, it must be f/4 and ISO 800. The picture doesn't seem nearly noisy enough for ISO 8000 From the "50.mmm" I'm guessing Judith typed all the EXIF info by hand so perhaps these are typos.

Oh yes gentlemen...it is my typing after midnight -oh dear me's!!!

It is indeed f/4.0 and 800ISO

Thank you for all the advice...I will be trying some night shots soon and I shall make all the recommendation.

After I work on my Photography skill...I will work on my typing and spelling

So to sum this up...decrease my ISO...from 800 to 200...then my f/4 should be increased to f/8...up to f/16...looking for a 'sweet spot'.

Oh ya...of course a tripod using delay..or a remote control!

Off I go for a try...will post my update!
Again gentlemen...THANKS