Friday 14 January 2011

Low Light Photography Tips

I get a lot of questions some impossible to answer, most of the impossible ones are about Low light photography.  i.e. shooting at night time or at dusk.

One of the impossible questions I have been asked is:
How do get sharp photos in low light?
I want to keep my ISO really low, and I cannot use flash and i am using a kit lens 18-55.....
(A) Not going to happen! unless you want to get shots which are silhouettes of people running with the setting sun shining straight into the camera.

You need flash if you are shooting sports in the dark. You need super High ISO if you are wanting to get fast shutterspeeds, and you will need quality glass which is f2.8 to help you keep those shutterspeeds high.

Anyway here are some more tips about what you can do with night or low light photography




here are a couple more videos after the break












6 comments:

  1. Hi Dom,

    Great videos ... just wondering, in the star photogrpahy section, you didn't mention anything
    about focus. Any time I've tried to do this, the
    focus is always off ... Any tips on the best approach ?

    Thanks

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  2. I did some star shoots recently and found focusing on the brightest thing on the horizon (for me there was a street light in the distance) and then switch focusing to manual to stop it changing, this normally equates to around about the infinity marking on the manual focus control.

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  3. the other option is manual focus to infinity then take it back just a fraction, and that usually works

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  4. Hi Dom,
    I just wanted to ask you, if you know anything about a D700s. A lot of people are starting talking about it.
    A D3s in a D700 body?...
    I commented on one of your Youtube videos to ask you if you could make a video on, how to shoot "highspeed" photo of eg. a piece of fruit dropping in a glass of water. The background is without any texture and the details of the waterdrops are great.
    How do I setup my Nikon Camera and my flash?
    I am 16years old, already collected a lot of camera stuff and now I am really getting into photography. It is getting more than a hobby. I am a great fan of your videos.
    Thanks a lot.

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  5. Hey dom,
    Do you know an average time allowed before you start seeing artifact from the sensor overheating? Kinda blows that you can get only get 1 or 2 long exposure shots at night, and then to look at them and they have huge purple blobs on them LOL. I have taken 25 minute exposures with no artifact..but want to start getting longer star trails.

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  6. valentine the video will be up later this week

    keith, no idea of an average time how big are your blobs?

    ReplyDelete