Settings for lantern pictures?

I will be going to a lantern lighting Festival this weekend. I have a Nikon D40 DSLR and am wondering what the best settings would be to avoid trails, blurriness, grain. I of course do not wish to use flash.

You did not tell us which lens you are using.

Open the aperture as wide as possible. Set the shutter as fast as possible with the wide aperture setting. Use a tripod.

"Trails" or ghosting happens with a long shutter-open environment and the image or the camera moves. Limit camera movement by using a tripod or other steadying device - no handheld camera. Hope the lantern(s) remain still.

"Blurriness" happens when the camera can't focus on the image desired and the camera moves or, because lighting is poor, the camera's autofocus does not know what it is supposed to focus on. That means you need to do the focus work. Manual focus + tripod. It is also useful to have an external monitor (5 inch diagonal or larger) if you can't use the eyepiece. Don't bother with the built-in LCD monitor. I use
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/...I_LCD.html

"Grain" = not enough light. Either add more light (not a flash) or use a camera with a much larger imaging chip, much wider lens diameter and a lens with a *really* wide aperture.

If it's dark and you don't use a flash, any moving object that is properly exposed will blur. High ISO will cause grain.

There are camera bodies that can mitigate both very well, but they are thousands of dollars. The D40 can't do this. Either way, you'd need a very fast lens to get what you're after.

I'd be more concerned with making sure you're using the right metering mode rather than trying to work out the exact settings in advance. I'd imagine the light is going to be very patchy, so you'll need to spot meter. You could get a couple of candles and try a few test shots in advance. Don't worry too much about noisy images - better that than no images!

This is the lens I will be using. The lanterns will be tied down.

You will have to do some tests onsite.

* Open the cameras lenses aperture so it is wide open at 18 mm (f/3.5)
* Set your shutter speed to no longer than 1/60th second.
* Now do your tests and adjust the ISO settings upward a 1/3 stops at a time until the paper lanterns show up with tome detail in the paper used to make the lanterns.

This is the advantage or using a digital camera, since you can check things like exposure and camera movement (blur) before moving on to the next composition.

NOTE: The higher the ISO, the more noise you will get, so adjusting the ISO slowly until you age a good exposure is the best approach

Set to A mode, ISO 1600, lowest f/number. This will ensure you get the fastest shutter time possible. Whether or not that is fast enough will depend on the actual lighting conditions you will be shooting with.

BTW, focusing might be a challenge too so you may have to do it manually.

To avoid trails, your shutter speed needs to be around 1/60th.
To avoid noise (not grain), your ISO needs to be below 800.

The only way in photography to get high shutter speeds while using low ISO settings is to have a lens with a large aperture such as the Sigma 18-35 f/1.8, a 50mm f/1.4, a 28-70 f/2.8 zoom etc… There are many option on the market with the Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 being among the sharpest and best for your needs.