Low light photography

Low light photography

Low light photography can be much more rewarding than photography during the day. Because everything looks different at night, you don’t need to go somewhere exotic to get great pictures. Bridges, attractions, and buildings are usually brightly lit at night, and places that might seem rather pedestrian during the day – can make stellar photography subjects at night. Further, you can take your time when photographing at night, more so than during the day. There are generally less people out, and you don’t have to worry about the light changing.

Before delving into night photography, you need a sturdy tripod.

Taking photographs in dim conditions requires long exposures, which means your camera has to be steady at all times. Get one that can handle a heavy camera, preferably made of aluminium or carbon fiber if you have more money since it’s both light and durable.

Use your tripod’s bubble spirit level to determine whether your tripod is straight or not. Alternatively, you can turn on your camera’s virtual horizon (typically found in the camera menu) to make sure your equipment is levelled.

Using manual focus.

Autofocus in modern cameras may be highly reliable, but it’s still not foolproof.
Auto focus works well in well lit areas but it will fail in poor lighting conditions!

Turn your manual focus to infinity (∞ symbol on your lens). To ensure that the scene you’re photographing is crisp, turn on the Live View Mode and press the Zoom-in button (the one with the magnifying lens icon). Magnify the subject you want to be in focus, then adjust until it’s pin sharp.

Filming low light without getting grainy images.

Keep your iso low while capturing . If the image is too dark, open up the iris, drop the shutter angle/ speed to a reasonable/ practical angle. If it’s still too dark, use artificial lighting if natural light isn’t enough or available. If natural light is inadequate and you can’t light the scene then decide whether the scene is actually film-able or if you should compromise and push up the ISO and make peace with the “grain”

I’ll share some examples of lighting effects you can experiment with. Color can be used to highlight the edges of a subject

Reason for blurry and noise in low light photography

There are two different questions in yours…Firstly, and assuming you are speaking of digital photos, it’s because as light is scarce, the camera does its best to augment the feeble signal it gets from available light by amplifying it – that is what high ISO sensitivity is for. But by amplifying the little light there is, the camera also amplifies “false signal”, hence the noise (the “grain”), which appears first in darker areas of the image in the form of light grains.

Then why is the camera not producing a slightly darker image is another question. A camera, at least modern cameras, have a light meter inside their entrails that measures light and adjusts shutter speed and/or aperture and/or ISO sensitivity. But to measure light, the meter has to compare it to something, which is usually a value for a neutral grey, and the camera then does its best to have the same light value as the neutral grey in question. So in front of a low-light scene, the camera actually tries to lighten it, and also to darken the scene when it’s lighter than the reference grey.

That is why, without intervention from the photographer, night-time images tend to be lighter than what the photographer sees, and conversely why images taken in the presence of snow in broad daylight appear disappointingly dark.

Now a word about how to remedy those two different problems: for the noise issue, there are ways to diminish it by applying noise reduction during shooting (it slows the camera quite a bit) or afterwards, in programs such as Lightroom or Photoshop.

Also, cameras are getting much better with time: my first NIkon DSLR, a D70 produced unbearable noise above ISO 400, my D200 was routinely usable to 800 and in raw to 1600, the D300 was set on ISO auto with a limit at 3200 (in raw), the D700 to 6400 and my present camera, the D750 I shoot routinely to ISO 12800… and the D5, which I only dream of, can probably bring a good enough image for newsprint at much more than that!

And the other problem is solved by what is called exposure compensation: the photographer, faced with a dark scene, knowing that the camera will render it too clear if left to its own device, must dial in a negative correction – and conversely, it is necessary to overexpose a bit when the scene is bright.

Examples.

This was quite a dark scene. I overexposed it.

This was, on the contrary, very bright – underexposure was necessary. I do not have access to my library now, so I can’t tell exactly if I have upped the existing on the spot or later in post, but I have.

Note that a lot of recent phones offer a “pro” mode that allows for exposure compensation, and also the possibility of recording a raw image that you can work on later on.

Capturing best pictures with just natural light and techniques.

Bounce and diffusion are primary. When Outside the use of shade and backlight. In other words, careful positioning of your subject.

I am somewhat presuming portraiture as a framework for your question but the principles are the same.

So photography is light and you must use it and manipulate it and control its contrast the best you can to direct it.

If you are inside try positioning your subject by the window. Try using bounce. Position white or silver card or polystyrene sheets (large 2 inch insulation in a bicycle stand has commonly been used in studios. You can paint one side black for a negative fill) on the opposite side to bounce light back toward your subject. White and silver will have different effects; you can also use black to achieve a negative fill. Vary the positioning of your subject from the window. The further in from the window the gentler the amount of fall off of the light will be across the subject.

The effects will vary depending on which direction the window faces and the time of day. Large North facing windows are always a diffuse even source and nice to work with. Others can get harsh direct sun at specific times.

You can get diffusion of varying strength and fix it over windows to help control effects. Professional materials will be measured in stops or fractions of a stop of exposure lost when employing the material over the light source. -3/4 or 1 stop is a good starting point if you buy something but remember it can always be doubled up if you have enough of it.

If you’re outside the higher the sun the harsher the shadows. Eyes become shadow holes. Try placing your subject under a tree so that you achieve a more even tone across the face. Try placing the sun behind and slightly off to one side of your subject. Meter the camera from the shadows so it does not silhouette. You can also then try bouncing the light of the sun back toward your subject.

In professional production large diffusion is often hung from butterfly frames over the subject to diffuse the effects of a high harsh sun. Smaller versions are available but can still be costly). Health and safety is paramount if working with large panels of bounce and diffusion outside where they can act as sails in the wind.

In conclusion, start to think about how you can control the contrast of a scene to achieve nice results. Take a piece of paper and play with it around an object and observe the changes in lighting on that object and you’re on your way.