4 Tips For Low-Light Shooting

Recently I had a friend of mine ask me about low-light shooting. Well, not just any friend – the illustrious leader of Sparkplugging.com, no less. She was interested in ways to improve her camera’s performance in low-light conditions, and so I decided to write this post to offer some tips for her (and you).

There are only 4 things that you can do when you are trying to get a good exposure in low light: adjusting aperture/shutter speed/ISO, or adding in additional light. To get good low light pictures, you can make use of one or all of them. Sometimes, you will the first three and still not get a great picture. It simply depends on how much light is in a scene, or how much light you add to the scene (via flash, etc).

Let’s take a common scenario – shooting in a dimly lit room. Here’s a thought process to go through to improve your chances at a good shot:

• Use a very large aperture. This means that the lens is opened up to let as much light in as possible. The measurement of this is called an f-stop, and is listed with numbers like f/2.8 and f/5.6. The lower the number is, the more light gets in the camera (yea, it seems backwards at first). So, set your camera to the widest aperture, which will most likely be f/2.8 or f/5.6 depending on your lens.
• Raise the ISO. Here, you are making the camera more sensitive to light. The downside is that as you raise the ISO, visible noise starts to creep in the picture. It’s a trade-off. You can use noise reduction software later to fix that to some extent, but it will never be as good as a lower ISO setting. Start with 400, and go up from there to 1600.
• Lower the shutter speed. With a slower speed, you allow light to hit the sensor for a longer period of time. Longer time=brighter picture. The flipside to this, however, is that as the shutter gets slower, motion becomes more evident. Start around 1/60th of a second, and go down from there (perhaps to 1/20th or 1/15th). As you get into those slower speeds, you will need put your camera on a tripod, or something like a gorilla pod (which is an excellent ‘wraparound’ tripod).
• Add light. Your other option is to add light to the scene yourself. Raise blinds. Turn on the lights or lamps. Use a flash. Once you add light, you can either raise your shutter speed (to get rid of motion), or lower your ISO (to get rid of noise).

That’s it. Those are the four options at your disposal. You can try any and all combination of them, and I recommend that you do so that you can understand the effect they have on the image. Shooting in low light is an issue for all photographers, and the good news is that every year new cameras emerge that provide better low light performance (e.g., the new offerings from Canon and Nikon in particular). 

I hope all of you had a very happy holiday season and New Year celebration! On my blog I’ve posted a ‘New Camera Tips‘ article for those of you that were lucky enough to receive a new camera for Christmas!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He just relaunched his new site which includes tons of images and several behind-the-scenes videos. He also runs BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements.You can reach him at doggett (-at-) doggettstudios.com.