Church Photos During Service

I will be taking photos with a Nikon D3000 during a very formal service & need to respect the atmosphere while not being a distraction. My lens is a 18-55mm. The time will be from about 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. The light is poor because the church's windows are on the north & south side of the building & the blinds are often closed. Since it would be disruptive to use a flash, what can I do to try to get good photos. I will more than likely have to shoot from the balcony or the sides of the aisles.

If this is the kit lens it is a bit on the slow side for low lite probable 3.5-5.6mm or so. If a faster lens is not an option than how about use of tri-pod in the balcony. You can raise your ISO up into 1600, I belive the D3000 will shoot at this will minimal noise. But your shutter speed may be a bit low for hand holding thus the tri-pod. Should be able to compensate and shoot natural lite buy bumping the ISO. If you can borrow or rent a faster 1.8 or 2.8 lens this would give you more flexability. Hope this helps you some.

Fotojo

Fotojo covered all the available options. You can only do so much with that lens in low light. Even if you use a tripod, you may still have blurry pics if the subject moves a little. Your shutter speeds will have to be slow to compensate for aperture. Cranking the ISO is really your only option. If you have some time before the event a 50mm 1.8D lens can be had for a little over $100. A great investment for your camera bag anyway. If you need to reach out a little more, renting a lens is a great option.
Good luck with the event.
Mark

I got off to a bad start. I made the mistake of not setting my camera before I got there. The program started before I got set. As much as I tried, I couldn't get the settings I wanted. The camera kept saying "subject too dark." I started shooting from the balcony at ISO-800. then I moved down on the main floor & shot from the aisle. The last 3 photos were shot from the altar. But, I was so nervous & frustrated because of not having the settings I wanted prior to starting. So, I just shot most of the photos in the mode I started in. The lighting was better than I expected. These are the settings I used for this photo which was taken from the balcony. Of course I wanted to focus on the choir in the distance rather than the people in the pews.

I'm not sure if my photos for this forum are supposed to be this large or not. I'm not really sure about how to handle attaching photos for viewing.


f/stop 3.5
exposure 1/30 sec
Iso Speed ISO-800
Esposure Bias 0 step
Focal Length 18
Max Aperature 3.6
Meter Mode Pattern
No Flash
35mm focal length 27