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Photography @lemmy.world HKPiax @lemmy.world

Which lens for low light event + portraits?

Hi everyone, although I like to study the photography topic, I'm really a noob when it comes to practical terms.

I would like to take pictures at a family event which will take place in a garden in the evening/night.

Well, my gear is quite modest, and I know I don't have what I need to take good pictures of both the place and the people there. I'm looking to rent a nice lens to carry around as I take pictures (and enjoy the party too! So I'm just taking one 😅). So I would really appreciate some advice on what to rent.

There are the four lenses I found while digging, two are primes, two are zooms:

  • Canon RF 24MM F/1.8 IS STM: it's fast, with IS, but I'm not sure about portraits with this focal length.

  • Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 L II USM: super fast, no IS, still not sure about portraits with this focal length.

  • Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM: IS, quite fast, zoom lets me take portraits, but I've read it's not very sharp.

  • Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8 L IS USM: IS, quite fast, zoom lets me take portraits (not strongly as the one above but still).

Here's my situation:

  • I have Canon Eos R10 with the EF adapter.
  • My hands are shaky, so without IS I need to be at least at 1/125...
  • I like to keep ISO really low (<6400) if I can.
  • I kind of pixel peep (I know I don't have the right because I'm crap but I can't resist) so I like to take as sharp pictures as I can.

Which lens would you reccommend? Since I'm renting them I was thinking about going all in with the expensive ones, the cost won't increase much. The primes are so bright I feel comfortable they will be bright enough, but I don't know if I can take good portraits at 24mm. On the other hand, zooms let me do more things, but I don't know if I can handle f/2.8 with my crappy and shaky hands.

Of course, if you can think of other lenses that would be perfect for the job I'm all ears!

Cheers

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  • Thoughts:

    • Take a prime and let your feet do the zooming
    • Go as fast as your budget allows, especially if light will be dim and you want your shutter speed to be high(ish). I've been pleasantly surprised by how low I can keep ISO levels in pretty dark situations with a fast prime. A f/1.4 lens is 2/3 stops ahead of a f/1.8 and a full two stops ahead of a f/2.8 lens. That's either 4x lower ISO, 4x faster shutter, or a smaller mix of both depending on your priorities
    • Depth of field will be something to consider, especially if you're taking photos of more than one person. If you have more than one face in the frame you'll want to make sure they're in the same horizontal plane and that you're perpendicular to it. If you have multiple rows of people you will need to stop down to make sure everyone's faces are sharp. For example, I took photos of my kids on Santa's lap this winter at 50mm and f/4 on my A7III (full frame). I had it focused on one of my kid's faces. Both kid faces were tack sharp, since they were in the same horizontal plane, but poor Santa was a bit soft. On my next go-round I'll either stop down more or work on focusing slightly behind the front row of subjects so everyone will have more equal focus. Granted, this won't be quite as bad on a crop sensor body. I'm guessing my total depth of field was something like 0.38 meters. On a crop body that would increase to a bit over a half meter at 35mm (50mm equivalent) and staying at f/4. All this said, if you have more than 2-3 subjects you're going to have a hard time staying wide open on a fast prime
    • Bring a speedlight and a diffuser if you can. It may be preceived as tacky to use flash these days, but it will solve your camera shake concern and allow you to shoot stopped down for more depth of field. If you're the designated photographer, this is the path I would take
    • With a wide lens, you might be able to get away with a slightly slower shutter speed. I know some folks have pretty bad tremors, but it's worth seeing what you can achieve consistently
    • How much space will you have to move around/how far can you be from your subjects? How many people are you going to try to fit into one photo? I shoot full frame and really enjoy 35mm (your 24mm), but I need to be 3 feet or less from my kids if I want them to fill the frame from their waist up. If you want tight framing on single subjects and/or or have the space to back up a little, it might be worth looking at 50mm equivalent lens (~35mm with a crop sensor). A 35mm equivalent focal length will let you capture more people and/or more of the scenery behind them though

    • I'm finding just now some time to reply. First of all, thank you for your advice!

      I don't think I can bring an external flash with me because I'm a guest too and I'll be going around the place dancing and eating, and I fear it would become too bulky if I also have a big flash on the camera :( I won't be the official photographer, rather the nerdy cousing with a camera so nobody expects much from me, I just really care because I love taking photos. The field is quite large and I can move around freely, and in my mind I'd like to take pictures of the scene from relatively afar or with no specific subject, but also group pictures with 2 or three people and even portraits.

      I totally understand the DoF argument: at f/1.4 I might get a very bright picture of a sharp nose with some blurry eyes! I'll step down a bit in those cases and hope for the best. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when taking "scenery" pictures with no close subject, won't the DoF become larger (I mean, larger area of things in-focus)? So in those case I can be wide open.

      I have a EF-S 24mm f/2.8 which is light and bright, which I could use for the scenery (even though I prefer shorter length for this) but from my experience it's not narrow enough when I want to take pictures of people looking at me; and I have a RF 50mm f/1.8 which is also light and very bright, also super sharp but it's kinda too narrow for portraits and definitely too narrow for scenery. I also have a RF 15-30 f/4.5-6.3 which I white enjoy but It's unusable for me in low light...

      The need for a nice lens to rent is precisely because I am not comfortable in low light in general except for close portraits. I know I'm asking for everything here while also restricting heavily on what I can use, so maybe I'm just dreaming and there is not a setup which fits all my requirements and I'll have to compromise.

      • You're welcome!

        If you have lots of space available to you and you want to take photos of people from somewhat far away, you might want a narrower lens. With my 35mm (your 24mm), I have to be quite close to my subjects if I want them to fill the frame. Granted, this will depend some on if you want full body or just torso + head. However, if you have the space a 50mm equivalent lens might be worth looking at. On a crop sensor this means looking for a 35mm lens. A 50mm lens on your body would have the same effective focal distance as a 75mm on mine. If I were to suggest renting a lens, it would be a 35mm f/1.8 (or faster) or a faster 23mm.

        RE depth of field and scenery: it all comes down to how far your subject is from you/the camera and how deep the scene goes. I'll have to dig up two photos soon to give you examples...

        The need for a nice lens to rent is precisely because I am not comfortable in low light in general except for close portraits

        If you're able to pull off portraits in low light, you should be fine for everything else.

        I know I'm asking for everything here while also restricting heavily on what I can use, so maybe I'm just dreaming and there is not a setup which fits all my requirements and I'll have to compromise

        I don't think you're being that unrealistic here. You're just weighing the trade-offs between framing, ISO, and depth of field. A faster, wider, lens will give you more depth of field than an equally fast narrower one if you keep your subject distance the same. If you move closer to compensate you'll still wind up with more depth of field on a wider lens.

        • I'll reply here also regarding the pictures. Thanks for sharing them! They look sick. If I understood correctly this is more or less what a 24mm would produce for me, which I recognize as familiar and I quite like it.

          I'm used to shoot either at 24mm (~39mm FF equivalent) or 50mm (~80mm), only recently have I been experimenting with 15-30mm (~24-48mm), and I've been loving because I can capture so much scene at 15mm, while I can get a nice "flat" picture at 30mm (I'm further away and I can capture also the "around" the subject, feels less like a fisheye. Hopefully you understand what I mean).

          I hadn't realized I was starting to shoot at the "sweet spot" that is 50mm, which everyone seems to love. I understand why now!

          I'm more and more convinced by the RF 15-35mm f/2.8. I know I won't have the same light as the f/1.4 or f/1.8 lenses I've looked at, but at this point I don't think I can give up the flexibility of the zoom: I'd like to shoot at 15mm for the scenery, 24mm for the close ups and group photos, and 35mm for portraits and details, and I feel like this is the only lens which lets me do all of this, even though it will limit me by giving up some light. Am I being reasonable?

          Hopefully I'm not disappointing you and the other kind commenters which have given me their advice to pick a fast prime and to bring a flash.

          I almost certainly won't bring a flash with me because of the , but I was thinking about diffusing the integrated flash I have on the R10 with one of those, albeit janky-looking, light diffusers that mound on the hotshoe and stay in front of the pop-up flash. This might help me out when f/2.8 is not enough let me shoot at 1/100-1/125 (below this I get mixed results with IS, and unusable ones without it).

          While looking around I've also found the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM ART which I can rent as well. It doens't come with IS and I've read that the autofocus is not as reliable, and I'll also lose some degrees on the low end, but at with that large aperture I might get enough light to compensate the lack of IS. What do you think? How much difference is there between f/2.8 and f/1.8? Is it enough for me to use it without IS?

          • Glad you found the photos useful. Yes, this is roughly what a 24mm lens would look like on your camera with just one twist - you'll get more depth of field at a given f-stop. For your event, this is a good thing.

            As far as using a f/2.8 lens, it really depends how much light you will have to work with and how badly you need the higher shutter speed. Using my first shot as the baseline: ISO 160, 1/40, f/1.4. Going from 1.4 to 2.8 is nearly two stops and bumping to a 1/160 shutter (for easy math) is another two stops. Those four stops gave to come from somewhere, so ISO would have to jump by a factor of 16 (2^4) to 2,560. This isn't ridiculously high, but it is getting up there.

            Going from a 2.8 to a 1.2 lens = 2 stops = 4x lower ISO if you hold shutter speed constant.

            Going from 2.8 to a 1.8 lens = 1 1/3 stops = (roughly) 2.5x lower ISO if you hold shutter speed constant.

            It's really going to come down to available lighting. How difficult would it be to spot the location and take some test shots ahead of time?

            • Yeah sorry, I completely forgot to address that issue: I can't really spot the location beforehand because it will be prepared and set up on the day of the event. I know geographically how it is though: it's a quite large garden (for my European standards) of a old house. It will have a different layout than the picture (food stands instead of tables in this case).

              It does have some fixed lamps around the margins, but the main lighting will be provided by the guy setting up the whole thing. I have a sample photo of what it should look like (sorry for the bad quality, it's just a screenshot I was sent).

              • That looks like it will be fairly dim. You'll also likely wind up blowing the highlights to preserve the shadows, which might not be a big deal if all of the lights are the same color. Sadly, this isn't the case for holiday lights...

                Even though the bulb count is higher than a residential dwelling, my hunch is that the amount of light will be similar thanks to having walls and ceiling. Try taking photos in your place of residence after the sun is down as a stand-in for the actual location and see if you like the results.

                Since most of the light will be from overhead, your on camera flash will need to fill in some shadows that will create on faces. If you can, ask what color temperature the bulbs will be so you can apply the correct jel to your flash. If not, bring multiple gels. The last thing you want is for the color temperature of your flash to be wildly off that of the lighting in the park.

                • So, quick update. I’ve gotten a cheap “diffuser” to put in front of the built-in flash (this one), and I’ve gone outside when it’s dark with some garden lamps around using my EF-S 24mm f/2.8 (so I can see with this aperture how it looks).

                  Well, first of all I’ve found out that man, flash photography is not intuitive, at least for me. I still don’t understand how to expose the pictures, especially with ETTL which, for my understanding, does exposure “automatically”, because all my pictures just look the same, with dark background and subject well lit.

                  I’ve read how, with this kind of photography, changing ISO, shutter speed, and aperture is supposed to change the exposure of the background, NOT the subject (which supposedly is handled by the camera+flash). Yet, I must be doing something wrong because the background is so dim every time.

                  If you have any tips that could help me out I would greatly appreciate it.

                  • What you're seeing is the result of a fairly well lit foreground and a dimly lit background. You do have a few options here:

                    • Dial back your flash intensity some. I'm not familiar with the Canon ecosystem, but on my Nikon with an external speedlight there's a very accessible control to dial flash intensity up and down while leaving the camera in TTL (Nikon's flavor of the auto flash intensity method you mentioned earlie). I've never tried doing that with the built in flash, but assume that would be possible. This will drive ISO up some, but life is all about tradeoffs
                    • Change up your background to something bright. Have your subject(s) in between you and that thing. Using a flash lets you put your subjects in front of good sources of light without you needing to worry about whether they are lit well by that light. An easy example is taking a portrait in front of a setting sun. Since the sun is behind the subject, their face won't have much light on it. You'll also be faced with blowing out the sunset backdrop or underexposing their faces. The solution? Get some light on your subject. This is why you'll see photographers who are working outdoors getting followed around by someone carrying one of those shiny circular reflectors. Another option is to use flash. This is called fill flash
                    • Use an off camera flash (or two) to add some light to your background. This is going to be hard to do outdoors though
                    • Cheat. I mean, make a composite photo. Take a photo of the background alone and take a photo of your subjects with the background underexposed. Composite the pair and you have the best of both worlds.You could even take a photo of your subjects in a different location that would make it easier to isolate them.

                    It sounds like this is your first rodeo, which is totally fine. Just practice ahead of time and treat it as a learning experience. Low light portraiture is hard to do well, especially with a single flash and/or a slower lens.

      • Apologies for two replies, but I wanted to make sure that you saw the depth of field sample photos.

        First, here's a photo with a decent amount of depth of field for the scene, despite shooting wide open. A7III, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM @ ISO 160, 1/40, f/1.4

        Here's another with a decent amount of depth of field for the scene, despite being wide open again. A7III, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM @ ISO 100, 1/80, f/1.4

        Here's a not particularly compelling photo, but it gives you a feel for where depth of field might fall off. Focus is on the overexposed white lion. A7III, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM @ ISO 1000, 1/40, f/1.4

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