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At the limits of what a camera can handle at high ISO, the images seem to become a bit soft, colors can get funky, and light meters can play tricks on you. At least that's been my experience with the Nikon D800E and Nikon D4. The following images were shot with a Leica M at ISO3200, 35mm Summicron lens(2.0) under pretty extreme conditions. Normally I would "add" light in these situations but did not on this particular night.
The first image is on the outside of a strip mall; a music venue where the lighting is OK. No big lights but some street lights and mall lights work pretty good. You can see from the shadow the lighting from the mall.
Next is inside the venue, the colored lighting can play tricks that can be somewhat but not always corrected in Lightroom.
Now I'm sitting in the front row of the audience, shooting up at the performers. Looks pretty good for no flash. The most difficult part is focus. The Leica M is manual focus and the subjects continually move around, and I'm shooting for the most part wide open(2.0) so depth of field matters in the image. In this case, you can see the focus on the hands is soft while the face is much sharper.
Next I'll shot from about 3 rows back in the middle of the audience. I cropped to just get the stage.
Next I went behind the bar, didn't sneak any drinks, to shoot across the bar in the direction of the music. Again you can see the impact of the depth of field.
Overall, the Leica M shoots reasonably well in these low light conditions, as I said earlier, the difficulty is focusing in the low light with moving subjects. I would give the camea high marks compared to anything else I have shot under these conditions, noise is manageable, and the colors are OK but have to be tweaked a bit in Lightroom or Camea Raw because of all the colors.
Another one from the outside.
A lot of photographers think you need to use TTL all the time when photographing with camera flash. That's just not accurate, in fact I rarely use TTL for several reasons. First and formost, it burns up a lot of battery juice. Secondly, I don't have control over over the image, the camera does all the thinking for me. I use manual flash 95% of the time even when my subject to flash distance varies. Let's take a situation where the subject to flash distance is fixed or moves around in a limited area. As a concrete example, let's take the stage below. I have 3 camera flash units hanging from the ceiling, no power packs, just batteries. I have attached pocket wizards to each. I'm shooting at 1/8th power and the flash is set to manual. The shutter speed is not relevant, simply dial in what your camera manual tells you for flash. You now control the light with your f/stop and ISO.. If I need more/less light, I either adjust my f/stop or my ISO or both. I set the camera at f5.6, ISO 200 to start and do some test shots, adjusting to get light I want. After that, I just shoot from any angle, opening up the f/stop if I want better crowd definition. The flash on the back of the stage serves two purposes, it is a back light to highlight the performers and it adds stage drama with the starlight burst.
I can come from any angle, the flash works fine.
I can capture clsoeups with no problems.
Or, as you can see here, putting both lights in the frame adds drama.
At 1/8 power the batteries hold up for shooting all evening within reason, you don't have to hang battery packs, and you get plenty of light with todays digital cameras. Another big factor, you don't pop a big camera flash on camera so you can be more stealth in positiong yourself for shooting. My lenses vary; for dancing/groups I like the 24/1.4, closeups 70-200mm/2.8, both with a Nikon D800E. I sometimes use the same lighting setup with a 50mm Summicron on a Leica body. As a note, you can slave the flash units with the commander on the camera but other folks using flash will trigger your lights and that's an issue.
Ok, start off shooting yourself trying to get a good selfie! This isn't easy, you have to get over vanity...and everything else. Notice I hid behind my camera!
Next shoot a friend doing something with you. This is easier because vanity only comes into play if you show it to him or her. A trick, shoot wide open, hides a lot of sins, figure out what you want to focus on. Here's Professor Montana doing a podcast with me.
Ok, your too sensitive to shoot yourself and you don't have any friends, photograph your cat, dog, bird, or squirrel. They could care less, doesn't have to be great, but a good one takes cunning. I mumbled "want to play ball" in a low voice which got my dog's attention for a second, long enough for me to snap. Sharkey doesn't like cameras because of me and my compulsion to photograph him.
If you don't like yourself, don't have any friends and no pets, photograph something of others.
Just peak in a window of somebody's car window
don't put your hand in, you will get arrested. Don't try this with someone's house, they have a place for folks like that and you don't want to go there. They will not let you take your camera with you!
And if none of this works for you take a picture of your favorite eatery, at high noon!
And if your picture is bad as this one, not even in focus, you will tell yourself "I can't live like this with a camera" and you will be extremely motivated to get out and shoot lots of photos to get better.
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