Night shots with Canon450D

rleegabe

I am taking night shots with a Canon 450D, and when set on TV or any other setting the same thing happens. I get several shots and then the camera quits taking pictures all together. I'm using a Canon EFS 18-55mm and a Canon 70-300mm. Both have image stabilizer. I've turned the stabilizer, and turned to AF to MF. I went down to lowest F setting, tried raising it, slow shutter speed and tried to raise that and nothing. The shots I've taken came out great, but after several shots, nothing. Anyone have any idea why?

bruto

Under what conditions does it revive? Check if noise reduction is on. Nikons have a noise reduction feature that doubles long exposure times, and I think Canon has something similar which limits burst length.

By the way, the 450D also has a fairly small buffer capable of only about 9 raw images before it will stall at least for a short while, while it writes the buffer contents to the memory card. If you're continuously shooting you'll only go a couple of seconds at a burst before it stalls. If you must burst more to catch some action, try smaller JPG files. It also helps to have the fastest card available.

rleegabe

I'll try a faster card, but I was not taking burst shots. Camera was on a tripod set to JPEG fine no RAW for night shots (f/4.5 at 1/30,1/15).

rleegabe

The camera is still on and all the displays are working. When I push the the button down half way to focus it will try to focus, but when I push it all the way down nothing happens. When I first took pictures I got about seven shots and then it wouldn't take anymore. This has happened twice. When I bring the camera into the a lighted area it works fine. My settings were f/4.6 and shutter at 1/30.

bruto

I'm guessing the camera is on focus priority. It could be as simple as that you were lucky enough to get focus the first few times, and then lost it.

Remember that the camera is always focusing at maximum aperture, so settings should not be relevant, but f/4.6 is pretty dim for low light focusing. Night focusing with focus priority will always be tricky.

Next time this happens, try switching to manual focus and see if it starts shooting again. Or, if you're in single servo mode, aim the camera at a point of light and focus on that, then recompose.

If it's a priority issue, I don't know what options exist on your Canon, but some options are likely available. On my lowly Nikon the only way to get release priority is by manual focus or switching to back button focus, but other models offer the option in the menu.