Photophys.com: The Science of Photography

     Over and over again I find myself in situations where the lighting is poor; but tripods are not allowed.  When only snapshots are needed, the camera's ISO setting can be increased to compensate for the inadequate lighting; however, the image quality always suffers to some extent.  One way around the problem is go ahead and select high ISO to permit appropriate shutter and aperture settings, but to compensate by blending multiple exposures of the scene.  In this way random noise can be partially averaged out.

     Recently I photographed Art Deco Cars from the 1930's at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC.  My experience with blending images and my recommendations are described below:

The Museum Rule (600 KB)