Moving Kids in Low Light

[nikonNadia]

Yesterday I was at a family reunion, and brought my camera along to take some photos of the younger kids - one of them is 3, the other is almost a year old.
Since we were indoors, the lighting wasn't very good - even though i opened up my aperture as far as it would go, I still needed to slow down the shutter speed, which caused a lot of motion blur. I didn't really want to use flash for fear that it would hurt the kids' eyes.

Do you think it'd be best to just use a slow shutter speed, use flash, or jack up the ISO a lot?

Thanks

[nikonNadia]

sorry, I posted this in the wrong thread. How do I move it?

[Doug Sundseth]

Longer shutter speeds will mean you'll need to time your shots very carefully or else you'll get blurry subjects. In some cases, this can be a nice effect, but I wouldn't want it to be the only effect I used.

Higher ISO only has a disadvantage (here) when sensor noise becomes too objectionable and you can't clean it up in post. (The current versions of the Lightroom/Camera Raw engine do a very good job of cleaning noise, FWIW.) Note that you're not comparing with images in perfect light but rather with other images shot in this challenging environment, so I'd not recommend looking for perfect image quality, just better than the other choices. This is very camera dependent, so you'll need to make that call for yourself after trying it out.

On-camera flash is both harsh and flash, so I would not recommend it as your primary lighting. It can work as a fill light in otherwise well-lit situations, but you should probably consider it a choice only when other choices fail badly.

Off-camera flash can give you the best results, and with diffusion should be no problem for kids' eyes. But you need to own, carry, and set up the hardware for this, so it's a notably higher-effort choice. (If you need more information about off-camera flash, the best place I've found is the Strobist, and I'd recommend starting with the Lighting 101 series.)

[GreggObst]

Keep in mind that if that flash really caused issues for children's eyes, there would be no school photos and no Sears Portrait Studio and no photos of kids on Santa's lap. For a normal child without a serious eye condition, flash is not harmful.

I totally agree though, get your flash off the camera and up on a nice light stand or on a justin clamp secured to a bookshelf or stair railing, etc. It will make all the difference in the world.