Originally posted by Substitute Hey there,
I am relatively new to digital slr (I've been doing rangefinder, medium and large for over 15 years though..).
I got myself a K10D that a friend traded me for a rangefinder I had....
This said, I use my K10D for one project, "Women on stage", that conists in portraits and live shots in low light.
Clearly, a Canon 5D would have been better for those kind of situations, right.
But I clearly don't feel like investing a huge lot of money in a Canon gear, and make a point using what I have.
So my point is how could I get the K10D to perform really well in low light, slow speed ?
I am mostly using a 50mm at 1.4 and a 100mm at 2.8. I'd love to get a 50-135mm at 2.8 since changing lenses during a concert is such a tedious process!
I am not really happy with the noise at 800iso...
Any clue?
My 0,02€,
Low light is generally difficult and minimizing noise requires top-notch exposure, especially on the K10 (because of possible VPN).
If you want details in the dark, you have to get your highlights up there almost to the point of burning them but that usually means a slow shutter speed.
An other solution is to loose the dark "noisy" details to pure black by setting a higher black point in PP. I do that a lot since the K10 seems to extract any tiny bit of detail in the shadows (22 bits AD convertor?), at the cost of getting a noisy dark grey where I would like some plain and simple black.
I happen to like my shadows like my cofee: black! But I will probably get hanged for "lessening the DR" or "not extracting every possible details out of the shadows" which seem to be considered as crimes nowadays....
Using a tiny bit of flash is also a solution: I use TAv mode with the whole ISO range enabled and a flash exposure comp of -1/3. ISO will be adjusted by camera to get proper exposure (I use spot metering on the subject with the appropriate amount of correction) and the flash will help get the noise down by giving some extra photons to the darkest places.
Hope this helps!