Light is a photographer’s best friend. It allows him more options to take photos because he knows that his photos will be properly exposed. But the photographer will sometimes have no control over his shooting environment. There will be times when the location will
have poor or low lighting. When this happens, it will take certain skills and the use of certain techniques to make sure that photos taken in these conditions will still turn out well.
First, play around with your camera’s aperture setting. This is the quickest way of making sure that your photos will turn out bright even in low light conditions. The aperture setting of a camera refers to how large or how small the shutter will open to let in light. The bigger the opening of the aperture, the more light can enter the sensor and, thus, the brighter the photo is. In contrast, the smaller the opening of the aperture, the lesser is the amount of light that hits the sensor, which results in a darker picture.
You should also adjust your camera’s shutter speed. The shutter speed refers to how fast or how low the aperture opens. The faster the shutter speed the faster the aperture opens, and the lower the shutter speed, the longer it takes for the aperture to close. If you are taking a stationary subject you can slow down the shutter speed so that there is more time for the sensor to get exposed to light. But a slower shutter speed also results in photos getting blurry especially if the subject moves. Blurring may be unwelcome in some photos but you can also use blurring as an effect in your photos especially as a trailing effect.
The camera’s ISO setting can also help you when you are shooting in low light conditions. The ISO setting refers to the amount of sensitivity the sensor will have on light. The least light sensitive ISO setting is ISO 100. At this setting, not a lot of detail will be
seen in photos. In the other words, the sensor won’t absorb a lot of detail from the subject. You can, of course, adjust the ISO to higher settings if there is not much light. You can put it at around 400 or 800, or even 1600, which is one of the highest ISO settings. Remember though that the higher the ISO setting, the grainier the picture gets even though you’ll get more details. Play around with the settings until you find a happy compromise between sensitivity and detail.
For more tips, read about how to take great food photos, street photos and action photos.
Photo from photo-info.co.nz