Some Canon S2is low-light/night pics please

[AlexCuria]

Hi I'm one of the probably hundreds of persons that are trying to decide between the Panasonic FZ5, Canon S2is and the Sony DSC-H1 camera.

Since I believe that my human eye won't really find much difference in daylight pictures between these great superzoom cameras I'm only really looking for sample pics of low light situations or night pictures.

I won't be using a tripod so I must find out the correct setup between Aperture, Shutterspeed and ISO i guess. I'm not so concerned about noise but more about pictures being totally dark or blurred. I will post some pics below that I've shot in such situations with my actual camera so you see where my problem is.

Please post some night or low light pic samples of the Canon S2 is.

To view some of my frustrating pics of the Fuji Finepix 2800z follow the link: http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16269

Many thanks.

[cat]

Hi, I don't know anything about the Sony but spec wise the FZ5 is pretty similar to the Canon, ISO only goes to 400, so suffers from the same problems. On the whole I've found the S2 very good - my problems have been with sports photography in low light - just can't get the shutter speed high enough so you either settle for blurry pictures or dark ones! All of the following taken without flash, the snowy one was taken on full zoom out of a window, the one of the child in the ball pit is also on full zoom. Hope they are of help ;)

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scatatonic/dark1.jpg

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scatatonic/dark2.jpg

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scatatonic/dark3.JPG

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scatatonic/dark4.JPG

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scatatonic/dark5.JPG

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scatatonic/dark6.JPG

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scatatonic/dark7.JPG

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scatatonic/dark8.JPG

for photos in good light see my web site ( work in progress! ) at www.snappycat.co.uk

[AlexCuria]

Hi,

thank you very very much for your comments and pictures.

The snowy picture is perfect and the pumpkin is also really awesome.

With the ambulance pictures I can see that there must have been a strong source of light to illuminate the stretcher with the person and helpers but the childrens faces are a bit dark. Wouldn't a higher ISO setting help correct this?

The birthday pics are also a bit dark but it's also nice that way because it brings to the ambience of a birthday celebration with the cake with candlelights. Lovely!

Thank you again for your contribution

[cat]

Re the shots with the Paramedics in - yes the building behind the children had a security light, this gave out enough light for me to forego the flash, but not enough for me to freeze the action!! The problem with upping the ISO is the results become really grainy - I find 400 almost unacceptable ( although you can fix this to some extent with noise reduction software )

I think the trick with cameras at this kind of level is to be creative - you can make certain low-light situations work for you but you won't have the degree of flexibilility than an SLR will afford you. There is a reason shots in poor light are hard to find for ALL of these cameras!! Of course it's also worth mentioning that the flash on the S2 is excellent :D

[Severin]

http://pics.livejournal.com/deadpansev/pic/0003bxd8/s640x480
http://pics.livejournal.com/deadpansev/pic/0003c823

I took both of these pictures at a small town parade from a balcony about 100 feet from the floats. It was obviously very dark and not low light. The floats had stopped when I took each of these.

[AlexCuria]

Hi and thanks Severin,

The pics are a bit too dark for my likes, but if you can, please post the settings used (ISO, Aperture, Exposure) then I can maybe make myself an idea of what is possible with other settings.

Thank you in advance

[Severin]

Hi and thanks Severin,

The pics are a bit too dark for my likes, but if you can, please post the settings used (ISO, Aperture, Exposure) then I can maybe make myself an idea of what is possible with other settings.

Thank you in advance

ISO 400
shutter speed .8 second (almost 1 full second)
F 3.2

It was about the same for both. This was my first time trying to take pictures in the dark with this camera. I had zoomed in a little so F 2.7 was not allowed and these were moving floats so I did not set the speed slower. It was also in a small mountain town that is very dark at night.

[AlexCuria]

Thank you very much for your time.

I'm quite surprised about the settings. With that ISO I thought the pictures would be much more noisy and they have almost no noise at all. Very good. I can't say anything about apertures 'cause I don't really understand too much about photography.

But again speaking about the pictures, I guess the cameras I'm looking at can't do much better or am I wrong?