Low Light Christmas Tree

Christmas time= billions of photos of kids in front of the Christmas tree.

Not this girl. Not this year. This year it was the cat. 

The cat was awake when I decided to try it.

Oddly the cat was more poseable(is this even a word? The red line is telling me no.) than my kids are at this point.

This has very little retouching.
I cropped it, warmed it up a little and did a noise reduction.

The settings were
ISO: 1600
SS: 1/8sec
Aperture: 3.5
I zoomed in at 18mm
I also used a tripod. With that low of a shutter speed I needed something more stable than my hands.

I was on pinterest and they suggested this link for me.
I did not have the lens they wanted me to have. It's on the wish list. I hear great things about it.
Of course I played around too

This one I had the shutter open for 6 seconds. Everything else was the same as before. I didn't edit this one at all. I'm thinking that it's a no go on the longer shutter.

Obviously for better photos clean up your space first. I did not.