Low Light photography

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Tim
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Was at a festival last yesterday, taking snaps of mates, and as the day light went, i found that the shutter slowed, so they became slightly blurred.

What would you do to keep the picture sharp? Larger Aperture? But my understanding is with a larger the aperture, the less that's in focus? does that still apply in low light conditions?

What is the easiest way to meter in low light conditions to make sure that the shutter is quick enough to capture the image clearly, but let enough light in to actually see something, and not just black?

infact, for general snaps of people, at festivals for example, what settings would you use?

this is a picture to show you what i ended up getting...

37794_455291885615_548625615_6631383_2908563_n.jpg


Thanks a lot!!
 
There are a number of ways to photograph in the dark. Setting a larger aperture is one of the easiest things to do but will only work up to a point before shutter speeds become too slow for handheld work. Oh, and you're correct: Large apertures decrease the depth of field, and this includes in dark conditions.

You will probably want to increase the ISO setting which makes the camera more sensitive to light. However, this can make your pictures quite noisy if you set this higher than your camera can comfortably cope with.

You might also want to get a flashgun and try out some flash techniques though this can be quite daunting if you haven't already mastered your camera.

If you're not photographing moving subjects a tripod will come in very handy as slow shutter speeds won't affect the sharpness of your images.
 
Last edited:
Hi Tim
I use Canon 5D, Canon 50mm F1.4 and if allowed Canon 430 EX 2.
If not allowed to use flash then its ramp up the ISO and hope you get some useable pics.
I posted a few yesterday on here from a festival.
 
There are three ways to deal with low light levels..

One as you rightly said is to use a larger aperture whilst keeping the shutter speed up, the second is using a slow shutter speed, this of course will not work in your situation as you have found, the third method is to increase the ISO setting of the camera.

So if your shooting at ISO 100 in daylight, as the light fades increase the ISO to compensate so that the shutter speed stays above 1/60th second or if you have shaky hands like me above 1/100th second.

I don't know what camera you are using but most modern DSLR's will cope with running ISO 800 without to much "noise" creeping into the image.

(Noise is the graininess you get when using a high ISO)
 
Ok, well, with this particular picture, the F was F5, the ISO was 800, and the shutter was 1/15.


What would be first thing you would change, the shutter speed, the aperture, or ISO? Does it make a difference?

And what mode would people shoot in, aperture control, or Shutter control?
 
Would be helpful to know camera, lens, etc.
 
I would change the aperture , but all my lenses are fast (have a wide maximum aperture) some lenses have much smaller maximum apertures (e.g f5.6, which will only let 1/4 of the light through)

as Craig says details please :D
 
I would push the iso to 1600 (I had one of these - the pictures will be grainy but usable) and get in closer so I can zoom out, this lets you get closer to f3.5 than f5.6 then open it up to f3.5 and try to hold the camera properly to minimise blur

(1/30th-1/40th aren't appalling speeds to hand hold)
 
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