Last night I was shooting my grandson's 4th birthday party. Flash photography was decidedly out as the only thing I had with me was the built in flash on my Canon 60D, a 1.6 crop factor camera. That simply made the photos too bright and harsh and negated the decorated theme of dim light and overall ghoulishness (assuming that is even a word).

Knowing I would be working with very dim light, I set my camera on manual with a shutter speed of 1 80th of a second (four year old boys can run pretty fast), aperture at 1.8 on my Canon 50mm prime lens and let the ISO float to 6400 after which the light would be reduced. With fast moving 4 year olds, I decided a tripod would be too slow so I did not take one with me.

Over all the shots were not too bad.....not to good either unfortunately, but many were acceptable.

Inside close quarters the 50mm got a little long with the crop factor so I decided to go to my 24mm prime 2.8. Have not had the 24 very long so I got to compare them side by side in low light. The 24 mm was definitely better in terms of focal length, but many more of these pictures were simply too dark to be worth much......the difference between the 1.8 and the 2.8 obviously.

My question is basically two fold:

First, had I been using a FF camera which I am still considering obtaining, would my aperture have been reduced by the crop factor giving me more effective aperture than I was obtaining with my current crop factor camera??? If so that would be a tremendous gain in terms of low light performance.

Second, from you advanced amateurs and certainly from you professionals, what else could I have done to improve my image quality in this situation based on your own personal experiences? Thank all of you for your input!

(I previously researched this last part of my question on the web and found that there seems to be opinions on this topic that do contradict each other, to say the least....I am confused on this issue but would really like to know as it will impact my decision as to purchasing a FF camera).

I use my Speedlites to shoot a drag races, usually using 2 Speedlites. You can get light stands that are pretty small when you break them down. One I use is a Matthews background stand to which I added an extension. It can go from ground level to to over 6 feet and breaks down in 30 seconds to air in a old computer bag or a backpack. There are also less expensive stands but this now is rated to hold 22 pounds. But I usually just have a speed light on an umbrella mount and a MagMod modifier or two. So, keep that in mind for the future. It is useful both indoors and outdoors.

Best,
Todd Ferguson

I looked at Matthews' website, and found their back light stand that sounds like the one you describe, at $69. Bookmarked it for future reference. Also see that B&H carries their products, which is convenient for me because B&H is in NYC making shipping time very short! [On B&H it is $49!] Had to look up the umbrella mount and MagMod modifier to better understand what they are for. I can see that the mount would be needed with the light stand. But have never used flash modifiers, even though my SB200 came with a few colored filters. Have to wait until I know more about using a speed light to figure out the filters part!

Thanks for the information. Always happy to learn about something that may be useful for me.
Susan