How?

[wonkydonkey]

I've just acquired my first DSLR. Its a preowned Olympus e - something? i'll have a look later.

I would like to take some outdoor shots at night and some indoor/night of my children and I was wondering if any one could suggest any simple techniques to start with.

I've had a good play around with some of the settings and I have an Idea of what sort of things they do but I cannot for the life of me get any good low light shots


Cheers

[Hill Country Hack]

You sure didn't give a lot of information about camera and lens type to help us out here.

How about starting with this..How To Get Better Digital Photos In Low Light Conditions Without Using A Flash

With more information you may get better results. Good Luck

[wonkydonkey]

I do believe I have the Olympus E-500. The lenses say 17.5-45mm and 40-150mm.

I'm a complete beginner so i wasn't sure what info you would need. I was kind of relying on someone like you who would say "we need to know the following..."

Cheers.

[Hill Country Hack]

Now we are getting somewhere. Take another look at your lenses for f numbers, these should be right after the focal range numbers you already provided. It might be printed "f4.0-6.3" or something to that effect.

If you are a "complete beginner" I STRONGLY suggest you go to the Turorial section of this forum and read about exposure, composition, Depth of Field until your eyes bleed. One must understand the basics of photography to begin the journey of never ending learning.

I also STRONGLY suggest you read your manual and learn your camera. One should be able to make changes by touch or in the dark.

[wonkydonkey]

I've already read the two you suggested and saved them to read again later to have a practice.

Ok, I only the numbers I can see are 0.28m/0.9ft-oo and1.5m/4.9ft-oo

[Frank Schmidt]

You'd "like to take some outdoor shots at night". What will you be taking pictures of? The night's sky? The moon? Buildings or people?

If they are still objects then several things are helpful. Does your camera have a 'bulb' setting? May have a "B" where you set the shooting style. If you have a bulb setting then you can open the shutter and leave it open for as long as you want. This allows long night shots that otherwise would not expose with short settings.

If you're using shutter speeds in the low range, like 1/6 or 1/12 of a second or longer then a tripod is good to have. If you don't mind spending $25 then a remote shutter release held in hand is a good device to use so you don't cause camera shake when you trigger the shutter.

Look at Chris [Nocturne] 's work on Flickr to see some neat stuff that he does with night pictures. Have fun !

[wonkydonkey]

I was hoping to take some pictures of the busy town center with all the Christmas lights on.

also I couldn't get any good pictures of halloween & Bonfire night displays because I couldn't figure out how to get good pictures of the family and keep the firework colours in so there are just blobs of fireworks in the background.

I havent seen a Bulb setting as yet but I thought I'd had a good look round the settings till last night... I had another look at the settings and found even more. I think its probably going to take a good couple of months to learn to use all the settings in the right way.

I'll have a look at the link later tonight.

Thanks.

[SalvadorCraine]

I do believe I have the Olympus E-500.

[wonkydonkey]

Come again?

[wonkydonkey]

also, How do I get my photos to come out grainy?