How can I reduce blur when photographing people at a low-light event?

Question

I’ll be shooting people at a night event with a Canon T5i and a 50mm f/1.8 on a crop sensor. My subjects may be standing fairly still, but they can still move slightly, and I’ll often be hand-holding the camera.

I’d like to avoid motion blur without pushing ISO unnecessarily high. I know techniques like mirror lockup, a tripod, and using a 2-second timer can reduce camera shake, but I’m unsure how much they help when photographing people in low light. Is there a practical lower limit for shutter speed in this situation—such as 1/30, 1/50, or 1/80 second?

I’ve also tried the camera’s handheld night portrait mode, which captures and combines several underexposed frames, but the results aren’t usually very sharp. Would manually taking multiple shots and stacking them later be a better approach, or is there a more effective solution for this kind of event photography?

user46861 · Accepted Answer

I'm going to a night event to shoot photos in low light

Flash. Use the flash. Did I mention using the flash ? :-)

and I want to do everything possible to reduce camera shake

Shake is really not the issue here. Motion blur in slow exposures is probably a bigger issue.

Flash eliminates both issues. A flash burst is extremely fast and will freeze all motion.

Done properly (hot shoe mounted flash, diffuse with a bounce card or similar) you also get a softer lighting that flatters the subject (usually).

so I can shoot slower shutter speeds

At an event ???? With people ????

I'm shooting people, so they will naturally be vulnerable to moving slightly so I can't shoot super slow at like 1/5s. But what about 1/30, 1/50 or 1/80s? What is the limit?

No. You'll get motion blur doing that. Why would you want that ?

Use flash to freeze motion and drag the shutter to capture backgrounds in a controlled way. There's a more updated way of thinking about dragging the shutter here. I'd suggest reading the original discussion and getting it clear in your mind before trying the modernized version.

This is a great technique to know for event shooting.

Having said that I've shot at f1.4 and ISO 3200 in quite a low light pub-type setting with good-ish results and without flash, but not an event - that was just a social gathering. The problem is that you're reduced to narrow depth of field and this is quite limiting for events. Shutter speeds were painfully slow in that case too.

At events you usually want a reasonable amount of depth of field available for groups. I'd never rely on available light wide aperture under these circumstances.

I'd use (yup) flash. That's a hot shoe mounted flash with bounce and tilt, normally with a bounce card or similar. Depends on exactly what you've got in the way of ceiling to work with.

so I don't need my ISO super high

Use high ISO. What's the point in having a large sensor if you're going to avoid using high ISO when you need it ?

mirror lockup 2 sec. delay

These are not useful for shooting people.

They are used to reduce shake, but you don't need that here, because the mirror lockup usually requires you to use a delay to get the best out of it. You'd typically use this for e.g. macro or long exposure stuff, maybe HDR.

But people shooting indoors is flash territory where possible (occasionally the venue won't let you).

How can I reduce blur when photographing people at a low-light event?

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