just bought 400d

[humbug]

hi all,
just bought a 400d with a ef-s 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 and a tamron 55-200mm f4-5.6 as a kit.
having previously used a panasonic fz7 and found that i had some almost great shots i thought it was time to upgrade.
having read most of the posts on lenses and concluding that the bigma was the lens quite a few people used i have a couple of questions to ask.
i often take photo's of deer and of otters at dawn or dusk but found with the fz7 i had to use full digital zoom(x64) and the results were often quite poor due to low light levels.and slow shutter speeds, looking at the details of these photo's i see that that the camera was shooting at f3.3 and at speeds as slow as 1/60th hence the poor results, these pictures were all by chance pictures so the camera was never set up for the conditions and never fully tested, but now with the 400d i feel i'll need the focal length of the bigma to get close up's but am worried that it won't be able to cope with the low light levels.
is this the right lens for me or will i have to pay a fortune for 2.8??
cheers
brian

[kshotton45]

It's either a fortune and a 2.8, or you'll have to use an ISO of 800 or 1600.
I often use ISO 800 with my Sigma 175-500 and get very good results.

Keith.

[glsammy]

The beauty of the Canon systems is the low light capability. As mentioned above, don't be afraid of using high ISO settings.
As an example, here's a shot I took yesterday in my extremely dim, dark, depressing back garden!:



This was at a shutter speed of 1/200sec. Aperture F7.1. ISO 800. Bigma @ 500mm.

[kshotton45]

Here's some advice off a camera forum .................

" When in low light situations, don't be afraid to set ISO to 1600. If you have sufficient depth of field, set your aperture to max and use Av mode. If you still cannot get fast enough shutter speeds, use RAW and underexpose by up to 1 stop. Usually (but not always) a grainy/noisy picture is better than one with motion blur. "


I might try that !

Keith.

[GME]

Originally Posted by glsammy

The beauty of the Canon systems is the low light capability. As mentioned above, don't be afraid of using high ISO settings.
As an example, here's a shot I took yesterday in my extremely dim, dark, depressing back garden!:

This was at a shutter speed of 1/200sec. Aperture F7.1. ISO 800. Bigma @ 500mm.

Sweet shot Graham! - A great advert for trusting and using ISO 800 if ever I saw one

In a slightly different set of circumstances I used both 800 and 1600 ISO on a 400D with pretty decent results. I was actually at an indoor karting centre last week taking shots of my work mates at our end of year 'do' (we're all teachers) I really struggled with the lighting and shutter speeds (either too dark but karts in focus or light enough but karts blurred). I bumped the ISO up and jigged around with aperture and shutter speeds and was really impressed when I downloaded them. Even on ISO 1600 the noise was perfectly acceptable and not one person who I gave their pictures to could even tell once I pointed out any slight graininess in the shadows. It was the first time I'd really used higher ISO levels as I've not had access to a DSLR for long but I was well impressed.

Anyway, I digress - I'm sure the Bigma will be a great lens and capable of some nice results in low light