question about manual settings

[reid506]

I have a Canon EOS Rebel XT. After dark tonight, I tried to take a photo of someone standing beside a small fire, using the flash and with a 15 second exposure, while in manual mode (ISO was at 800). Every time I pressed the shutter release it would indicate too much light. I changed the shutter speed to too little light and tried proper exposure just to make the camera take a picture. Very few times did it even take a photo. Instead it would flash "busy" or a light would flash to indicate too much or too little light.

I thought in manual mode I could take the photo the way I wanted to take the photo. What if I wanted to paint with light for 30 seconds only with the exposure of my choice?

Is there an even more manual mode than manual that I'm missing? Thank you in advance for any ideas.

Reid

[Sterling]

Are you sure it wasn't indicating that it couldn't achieve focus? This is a fairly common issue in low light conditions. I'm not familiar with your camera but depending on the auto focus mode used, some cameras will not activate the shutter if they cannot focus. Just an idea.

[reid506]

Thanks Sterling. I'll try manual focus and see if that works. It did try to focus a lot but did seem to get it correct occasionally (with shutter release half way down), but still wouldn't take the photo. I'll try the manual focus and hopefully that will do it. Thanks again.

[wulf]

In manual mode it should happily let you take hugely under or overexposed pictures. I almost always use manual mode on my D40 and have had some surprisingly good results (as well as lots more shots to delete) when my initial settings were a long way off! I think Sterling may be onto something.

Can anybody with experience of using a Canon EOS Rebel XT shed some, erm, light on the problem? It looks like Sterling and I are both Nikon DSLR users and most of my lenses are non-metering, manual focus only affairs (which is one of the reasons why I use manual mode most of the time).

Wulf

[Woody]

You usualy need to shine a torch or light on the object to get the auto focus to work.

It can't see in the dark.

Also use a tripod and try lower ISO and higher f and time exposure. Works for me.

Cheers,

John W

[Edsport]

I think you have noise reduction on. Noise reduction will take a pic of 15 seconds after you take a pic of 15 secs so you have to wait or turn it off...

[reid506]

Thank you for all the responses. I love this site. Edsport, after your response I read about the noise reduction feature and I bet that is what happened. That would explain why it would occasionally take another photo - it was finished reducing noise. I'll try it again tonight and if it's much too noisy I'll turn it back on and try and remember to wait for my second shot.

I'll also use a good flashlight so the autofocus works correctly.

Thanks again.