So the other night we played badminton and cut up glow sticks and poured the light all over the rackets, birdie and net. It was sooooooooo awesome!! Everytime we hit the birdie glow in the dark drops would fly. But I couldn't get any good pictures! I was so disappointed! I couldn't use the flash because it wouldn't show the glow in the dark effect but if I didn't use it seemed like it was too slow and was super blurry. I had my iso at 200 and shutter speed at 1200.. any suggestions I'd like to try it again!!
Try using longer exposures and a tripod. The tripod will stop the blurryness from camera shake. The longer exposures should leave light trails from the glow sticks. Adjust the exposure length until you get the effect you are looking for. Exposures lasting a couple of seconds may be necessary to allow enough light in, depending on the ambient light.
If you are looking for photos that don't show movement then bumping up your ISO could help.
@gibbs Thanks a lot David! Okay I have no clue how to adjust the exposure. Is it just +3, -3 etc. ? I don't have a tripod.. and I didn't mind the movement of the birdie because it left a trail of glow, but other than that it didn't capture the actual moment if that makes sense? Maybe I can upload a picture to show you what I mean.
The easiest way to adjust the exposure time is to shoot in shutter priority mode. This should be an "S" on the setting dial. This will allow you to adjust the shutter speed and the camera will change all the other settings.
A shutter speed of 1200 is way too fast for night time photography. Maybe you could try around 1/10 and try hold the camera really still.
Bumping up the ISO is probably a good idea too if you want a still picture. This should help pick up more of the glow too.
You need to set your ISO much higher. I'm not sure what you mean by your shutter speed at 1200? If you mean 1/1200 of a second, then that's very fast -- but looking at the photo you posted, the shutter speed for that photo was actually 1.2 seconds, which is why you got so much motion blur. If this wasn't what you set, it's likely due to the camera overriding your settings.
From what you're describing, I would have set the camera to aperture priority mode, put the aperture almost all the way wide open (smallest f-number), set the ISO to somewhere between 800 and 3200, and let the camera decide the shutter speed. Your photos would have been noisy but would have captured the action.
Basically, your ISO determines how sensitive the sensor is -- if you want to freeze action in low light, you need to set it high, and combine that with a wide aperture (which lets more light through the lens). By using a low ISO, your camera was unable to get a proper exposure using less than a 1.2 second shutter speed, and even then the resulting photo is very dark.
@abirkill Okay I will try again w/ all your advice thank you so much for all your help! When I change my shutter speed on my camera it will just go up 1200 to 3200 ish. Maybe I'm just saying it wrong? And maybe after it didn't work on aperture or shutter I switched it to night mode to see if I could get some pictures so then the camera overrided the settings..? Sorry I feel so stupid sometimes I just have not figured all this out yet.. need to work on figuring out my settings better!
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If you are looking for photos that don't show movement then bumping up your ISO could help.
Hope that helps.
This is pretty much how all of them looked lol. But I liked the birdie in the air but that's it ha ha.
A shutter speed of 1200 is way too fast for night time photography. Maybe you could try around 1/10 and try hold the camera really still.
Bumping up the ISO is probably a good idea too if you want a still picture. This should help pick up more of the glow too.
From what you're describing, I would have set the camera to aperture priority mode, put the aperture almost all the way wide open (smallest f-number), set the ISO to somewhere between 800 and 3200, and let the camera decide the shutter speed. Your photos would have been noisy but would have captured the action.
Basically, your ISO determines how sensitive the sensor is -- if you want to freeze action in low light, you need to set it high, and combine that with a wide aperture (which lets more light through the lens). By using a low ISO, your camera was unable to get a proper exposure using less than a 1.2 second shutter speed, and even then the resulting photo is very dark.
@dancingkatz Thank you!
@abirkill Okay I will try again w/ all your advice thank you so much for all your help! When I change my shutter speed on my camera it will just go up 1200 to 3200 ish. Maybe I'm just saying it wrong? And maybe after it didn't work on aperture or shutter I switched it to night mode to see if I could get some pictures so then the camera overrided the settings..? Sorry I feel so stupid sometimes I just have not figured all this out yet.. need to work on figuring out my settings better!