Low Light Photography (Manual Modes)

Low light photography is one of if not the biggest challenges of photography. This has a lot to do with technique, and with your camera.

Terms

I'll be using these terms to explain how your camera adjusts for low light and how you can get sharper images at night or in a dark area.

* ISO: Your camera's sensitivity to light
* Aperture (displayed as f/5.6 or similar): How much light your camera lets in also adjusts depth of field (how much of the picture is in focus)
* Shutter speed: how long your shutter will be open, contributes to blurred motion
* Sensor: it is the film of the digital age. What used to be film has been replaced by a digital sensor this processes the image and then is written to the memory card
* RAW: this is a camera format like jpeg but unlike jpeg it is uncompressed and saves all the data from the shot. Most Point and shoots do not have it but most DSLRs do. It provides greater versatility in post processing
* photoshop: I use photoshop as a general term to describe image editors
* Noise: similar to film grain caused by high ISOs or the amount of pixels on a sensor (the closer the pixels the worse the light sensitivity and more grain)



Your Camera

I would like you to go into that scary manual mode on your camera. That's right get out of the auto or program mode. Adjust some things, see what they do.


Shutter Speed

The shutter is the main problem of low light photography. The faster the shutter the less the blur. The problem is that the less the shutter speed the darker the image so we need longer shutter speeds at night or in the dark.

Aperture (fstop)

The hole made up of the aperture blades is called the iris. The iris allows the light into the camera. The smaller the hole the higher the f#. Lenses come in different aperture ranges such as f/3.5 – f/32. That is the aperture range of my 18mm – 55mm Nikkor lens. The lower the fstop the less of the picture will be in focus. If you are shooting macro photography or will be in a dark environment you want a lens that has a very low aperture. A fast lens is about f/1.4, give or take a few stops. The depth of field is the amount of the picture in focus.




How to Hold Your Camera

While settings are all well and good it's important to hold your camera correctly. IF you hold your camera by the corners like thumbs on the bottom of the camera and both index fingers on the top with your arms extended. STOP IT! This is the worst way you can hold your camera. You wand to hold the side of your camera with your right hand and put your left hand under the lens carriage (even if you're a point and shoot user) that's how pro photographers shoot and that's how you should shoot. Keep it close to your body. You want to use a stance similar to shooting a gun. Shooting a gun relies on steadiness and balance. Photography is similar in that you need to be steady so you get less camera shake.



Products that can help

There are maybe three options worth mentioning that can help steady your shots when you need to shoot with a slower shutter speed

Tripod
The one everybody is familiar with the big bulky set of legs that are annoying to carry around and have a set up time that your family doesn't want to deal with. Great option, it's what I use. It's the sturdiest and best for a DSLR.

Monopod
Has one leg and is for a little help it doesn't stand on it's own. Virtually no set up time, lightweight and can be used as a walking stick while hiking. This only helps with vertical camera shake not left right camera shake.

Beanbag
Most pros know about this but not a lot of amateurs. This is a beanbag made for photographers that sit on a table or some other flat surface and can take long exposure shots.

How to adjust settings

Products can help but real photography is in how you adjust your settings. If you know how to adjust setting you can get the look you want as well as reducing camera shake. Here is the order in which I adjust my setting for a night time shoot. I’ll say a cocnert or something low light but not a landscape.

• ISO: Adjust to 800 or 1600 depending on darkness do not adjust to 3200 or Hi
• Shutter Speed: Adjust to a lower shutter speed that you feel confident in hand holding. The lowest I can go is 1/10th 1/6th. Don’t adjust to the lowest but adjust to the exposure needle.
• Fstop: Adjust according to your need and your wanted depth of field.

There are obviously other factors but this is usually how I do it if I just want a clear sharp shot in the dark. I didn’t talk about flash I will talk about using flash well in another post. I will also talk about purposefully blurred shots in a later post. I hope that this helps you to be able to take better low light photographs.



Thanks for reading, and get out of the green box

Jordan