I'm the one in the family with the 'swanky' camera now and am expected to produce masterpieces all the time! Needless to say, I can't. I need some tips on taking candid shots indoors where the light might be poor, all I seem to get at the moment is very grainy pictures that look poor quality. Help? Thanks.
I don't use a 'swanky' camera but when I used my 35mm the 50mm lens was the best because of the close proximity to the people. You shouldn't need a zoom at all.
This is more difficult than you may think. In order to properly freeze average human movement you need a shutter of at least 1/125. Anything slower and the hands and face start to blur from motion. Even using something like the 50mm f/1.8 shooting wide open at f/1.8 is problematic because of the DOF. Standing 10' feet away using that lens at f/1.8 your depth of field extends from a person's nose to their ears. That's not much.
You need to get comfortable using your flash. If all you have is a built in flash then you need to learn how to get good angles on people. A tip to avoid harsh shadows behind people is to tape a piece of white foam core board or even a small piece of a mirror under the flash to direct it upward. Then, set your built-in flash to manual and set it to a high power something like 1/16 power. The flash will bounce off your hopefully white ceilings and create nice lighting.
When shooting indoors always shoot at 400 ISO at about f/5.6 or f/8 with large groups.
@jasonbarnette I still only have a pop-up flash. I was wondering if taping wax paper over it when it's up will diffuse the flash. Or will it over-heat the flash, singe the wax paper, & otherwise create havoc with my camera?
@herussell Wax paper will diffuse it, but built-in flashes are notorious for overheating. The built in flash on all my Nikon cameras are broken now and I rarely used them as it was. As long as you don't shoot too many photos continuously you'll probably be fine.
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You need to get comfortable using your flash. If all you have is a built in flash then you need to learn how to get good angles on people. A tip to avoid harsh shadows behind people is to tape a piece of white foam core board or even a small piece of a mirror under the flash to direct it upward. Then, set your built-in flash to manual and set it to a high power something like 1/16 power. The flash will bounce off your hopefully white ceilings and create nice lighting.
When shooting indoors always shoot at 400 ISO at about f/5.6 or f/8 with large groups.