Indoor @ night w/out flash? Possible?

[malko16]

I find myself using my camera a lot at night when my husband gets home and starts to play with our 2 young daughters. Because they are so little and don't sit still my shutter speed is fairly fast, however, every photo I take is so dark and underexposed. I despise using a flash because it makes my photos look so unnatural. Any suggestions as to how I can expose my photos better indoors without using my flash?? I typically have my ISO pretty high which results in grainy photos so I really have no clue what to do to make them better. Thanks for any suggestions!

[sk66]

Get a much faster lens. Use bounce flash/ off camera flash. Get a faster camera (better high ISO). Get brighter lights/ turn them all on...

[inkista]

What kind of camera do you have?

If you have a dSLR, then using a higher iso setting, a faster lens (one with a larger max. aperture), bounce flash, off-camera flash, or digital push-processing with RAW are all options to help you out.

If you have a point-and-shoot, you're more limited in the techniques you can use, but zooming out instead of in may get you some more aperture to work with, and there are a lot of clever hacks out there to get off-camera flash from a P&S.

[SandeeWig]

And if you only have the pop-up flash on your dslr, this party bouncer works pretty good, if you have low ceilings or are close to a light/white wall.

[ttosifa]

Consider a Nikon D700 (or a D3). Photos look great even at ISO 6400 when properly exposed. I use my D700 all the time in very low light conditions without flash.