Help with Canon Rebel XT

A very challenging shot. Best if it can be accomplished without a flash, this will require patient subjects.

1. A tripod or some other method of keeping the camera very still.

2. Twinkling lights as opposed to big blobs of color are accomplished by using a very small aperture (think f/11,f/16,f/22).

3. You will probably want to change the Iso to something higher (Iso 800 is where I go with my Olympus)

4. Use the timer on the camera to eliminate as much chance of shake as possible.

5. Try to get some natural light or or some sort of illumination if possible (Bright light with a sheer white sheet or cloth to diffuse can work, think outside the box!), on your subjects, the tree lighting will create a lot of backlighting.

6) Enable Mirror Lockup (in addition to the self timer usage from 4 above) in the custom functions.

There are no exact settings but...

Hello did you already take your picture? If not, I really want to know what exactly want to do, I mean, what do you want to capture, the lights, the kids, everything?

You could take a test picture using this settings:

1. DIAL = MANUAL (M)
2. LENS = MANUAL FOCUS + 18mm
3. APERTURE = F2.8 (MAX APERTURE)
3. FLASH = NO
4. ISO = 800
5. AWB (WHITE BALANCE) = INCANDESCENT / TUNGSTEN
6. SPEED = SET MANUALLY TO 5-10 SECONDS (Overexposure) or whatever your light meter at the camera shows above 1"
7. TIMER (10s)
8. TRIPOD

You need to ask to your kids not to move for all at least 5-10 seconds, it is recommend not to touch the camera to avoid any kind of movement so you should set the camera to TIMER, also I guess you are going to shot at night so you can only use the christmas tree lights so you can turn off your room lights to test, but as I already said there is no exact setting to shot at night or to capture with long time exposure, also with long time exposure the camera must be fixed if you don't have a tripod you can put the camera on a stool or a chair or a table.

Also on your camera settings at QUALITY you should set RAW + L, this may help you if you want to take some adjust on the picture to the computer, this option save a JPG file but also a RAW file and then you can edit this RAW files with a program like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or something like that.

I hope you can take a nice picture.

Have a geat day.

use a Cross Screen/Star filter

You can use a Cross Screen filter to get the twinkling effect.

Here is an example of using the filter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJrbU4tTsJI&feature=related