Low light test with Olympus 740

[wildebeast]

This picture was taken in low light conditions as a test.
740 set on manual focus and exposure from about 90 feet away with camera handheld on full zoom.

HQ Enlarged size 3200x2400
F-Stop--3.7
ISO-----100
Exposure time--1/60

Notice that I was able to keep the tree and my digital game camera in focus even with the ferns and vinemaple leaves between me and the subject.

cliff

 

[Stu]

The picture image quality looks pretty sharp. Taking a picture of a deer off a stand with brush in between the deer and the camera should not be a problem. Provided you have the time to focus and make camera ajustsments.

 

[wildebeast]

Stu...

I set the cam up according to the weather and light conditions before entering the woods and turn off the default settings......this way all I have to do is turn on the cam and take the picture...if the lighting changes then i just reset the settings and they will stay there even if I shut the cam off.

Works almost like a point and shoot.

cliff

 

[OhioBowHunter]

Cliff,

Nice demo Picture of what were talking about here... I thinkk what will help me alot is taking more time to read the Book, and Understanding these settings. What hurts me is I have no Knowledge of what a good setting would be in varying light conditions. I need to study that to understand those features a bit more.

The camera takes GREAT Pictures , But trailing a Deer in thru the Brush and constantly changing to his Movements without be able to rely on a auto Function is tough.

Setting a setting prior to heading to the woods will factor for a Common denominator of light Conditions, but hazy cloudy sun in sun out. days which are most this time of year, this can be difficult No? Or you find once its settup its pretty good, from there just manual focus

Dan

 

[Lan-Lord]

Hey OhioBowHunter,

I had a couple of ideas. Depending on what you really want to acheive out of the photo, (eg a great photo verses a decent photo) here are a few things to consider.

Bump up your ISO setting (400 or 800). I know it will add noise, but bottom line is it will enable your shutter speed to be faster and prevent a blurry photo. Who cares if there is noise. I would rather see a photo of a monster with some noise, than a blurry photo of a monster without noise.

If you bump up your ISO to get a faster shutter speed, you may be able (depending on how low light conditions are) to get a bigger f-stop value (f4-f8). A bigger f-stop value makes more of the photo in focus. (bigger the f-value, the closer to infinity that the camera tries to make in focus) The downside of this is the bigger your f-value, the slower your shutter gets, but that is why I said bump the ISO up.

If you notice, wildebeast's f-stop was at 3.7 He was able to capture a good photo of his trail cam even through brush.

So here is the lan-lord key to backwoods photos. Set your ISO value up (maybe try 400 at first). Then set the camera on aperature priority of f4. This will give you a chance. If you have really low light, nothing you do is going to get a very good photo. (unless you have infrared?) Play with it some to see how things turn out.