I have a couple of digital cameras and it seems that I have a hard time getting the right setting when I want to shoot a picture let say from a museum and most particularly inside a candle light restaurant. I have to shoot more than 5 times at most before I got an acceptable but not really a good looking pictures. Is there a magic number to use in adjusting the flash or something else to do this? Im still a newbie inspite of owning several digital cameras. Need some expert inputs. Thanks! First depending on the type of digital camera you are working with will determine if you can shoot really good photos or just get a so-so picture. DSLR cameras give you more room to make adjustments to your settings and you have different lenses and flashes to help you. Point and Shoot digital cameras are limited on what they can do because the average person does not really want to do anything tricky with these types of cameras and just "Point and Shoot" if they get the picture they are fine if not they forget it.
So first you can try doing this in your house and putting yourself in various "Night time" or "low light" situations. You should work with a tripod that is sturdy to hold your camera, also you can put it on the self timer to keep any vibrations from your hand effecting your exposure. Depending on what and how far away your subject will determine if you will use a flash or not. A flash is only good for a few feet (depending on the flash). A lot of times if there is enough ambient light (light that is around you i.e. candles, street lights etc) you should be able to still shoot a picture by keeping your ISO at 100, start at an exposure time of maybe 10 seconds and a f~stop of 5.6~11 to start to see what your image will look like. Make slight adjustments to your exposure time or/and f~stop till you get what you are looking for. You can also use your flash as a fill in to help your exposure.
NOTE!! If you go over to long of an exposure time (depends on the camera) we will just say 20 seconds you will have a lot of "noise" in your images. These are little white specks that look like a snow storm in your images a couple is fine but to many and your images are no good. This is also why I mentioned use a low ISO like 100 the higher you go the more noise you will get with your exposures.
I hope this gives you some help,
Kevin Are you using the flash on the camera or are you using extra flash devices? | 