There's a kid in the apartment across the street from my west-facing house. She comes out to their balcony at about 5pm. It's a delight to see her play and I have often tried to capture her smile, but to no avail.
The problem is that at 5pm (this time of year in Bangalore, India) the sun is in west sky and my balcony is quite well lit. In contrast the balcony that she is in, is quite dim. I have tried using a Canon 1000d with a 75-300 lens at 300mm with f5.6 but the meter reading for perfect exposure is in 2s even in ISO 200. I have a tripod and can keep the shot steady for >1s, but my subject is not!
Moving to higher ISO in my camera just adds too much noise and max aperture of my lens at 300mm is f5.6. My question is how to capture images in such conditions? The options seem to be:
- make your subject stay still for longer, which is not an option in a scenario like this
- go for higher ISO camera (I am eyeing a 60D anyways)
- rent a fast lens; something like f2.8-ish should be fine I guess
- use a flash; the street is too wide for this solution to work
What do you guys think?
PS: The scenario is just an example. Lets not go into "how to make sure the kid is still" or "you should ask permissions" or any other non-camera-equipment angle.