Please help!!!!!!

[Kellyj69]

Ok .. let me preface this by saying that I don't want to become a "professional" photographer .. I simply want to learn how to take better photographs. that said .. one thing I like to shoot is live bands .. I was getting images that were too dark, so I upgraded my lens to a 50mm fixed f/1.8 - "Nifty Fifty" .. now the brightness is a little better , but my shots are coming out "grainy"

I've done NO post processing on this shot , other than resizing for posting

exif
shutter speed 1/200 sec
ISO 1600
shutter priority
f/1.8
focal length 50mm
metering - center-weighted average
no flash
horrible lighting
camera Rebel XS
lens 50mm f/1.8 fixed

once again .. I'm not necessarily asking for "critique" on this shot .. I know it sucks.. but I'm trying to figure out how to get decent shots in low light with no flash... and not "grainy"

Of course any other free advice will be very welcome

Thanks

[Lolkat]

hi, just want to start off by saying i'm pretty new to photography. But I did notice your ISO is very high, which will inevitably produce the graininess. The one way I would suggest helping this may be to try to use a tripod and slower shutter speed and also a lower ISO, which may be difficult since the subject will most likely not be static. I'm not sure if this will help much, but it's just my 2 cents.

[xd40c]

Lowering the ISO and Tripod are both excellent suggestions.

Taking band shots will always have issues because the light is unusually less than perfect. So you increase the ISO so you can get a faster shot.

Have you tried any noise reduction programs? I here the new Lightroom 3 has pretty good noise reduction. If you must continue with the high ISO, some kind of noise reduction software may be your best option.

Or you could go with a D3s, for several thousand more dollars, I here it has excellent results at high ISO.