I have gotten pretty decent at shooting outdoors using natural light. I shoot almost exclusively in manual mode and feel like I have definitely gotten the hang of it. Indoors, however? Not so much. I have to sacrifice shutter speed to get the light I need, and as the mother of a 1 and 3 year old, that doesn't work so well. I have tried aperture priority and shutter priority without success. Shutter priority consistently tells me the subject is too dark. Today, Charlotte was up from her nap before Luke, so I took advantage of her playing quietly alone to fool around with the camera (using her as my subject, of course!). I suddenly remembered something I had read recently about exposure compensation. I boosted it a little to the positive, used the coffee table as a tripod (to compensate for the low shutter speed necessary), and started shooting. I even got a few elusive smiles!
Both of the pictures below were taken with my Nikon 55-200 f/4 lens.
1/15 sec
f/4
ISO 1600
+0.7 exposure compensation
And then big brother woke up, and after a snack of teddy grahams wanted to play with his computer again, so I snapped a picture of him, too!
1/25 second
f/4
ISO 1600
+0.7 exposure compensation
I got lucky today - there was a good amount of light coming through the window, and (more importantly), my children stayed relatively still while I was taking pictures. This is rare! While I was able to make these settings work today, I typically need at least a 1/125 shutter speed to stop their motion.
I'll keep practicing. At least I know it CAN be done!
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