Useful Tips for Shooting in Low Light Situations

by Christopher B. Derrick

Since photography means to “write with light”, it is at one of its most challenging moments when you are shooting in low-light conditions (this could also mean the practical absence of light). Many a photographer has made his or her name from taking provocative and arresting images at night (Brassi immediately comes to mind). And as a practitioner of the art & craft you’ll want to experiment with night and low-light photography. Much like shooting in snowy conditions, you have pay extra special attention to your exposure when shooting at night. Those pockets of darkness will be much more evocative if there is a hint of shadow detail hiding in there, as opposed to uniform chunks of black.

Stabilize Your Shoot

The first thing you’ll want to get when shooting at night (or in low-light) is a tripod or some kind of stabilizing object, because one of the best ways to control your exposure is to have command of the widest range of shutter speeds — at small apertures. And when the shutter speeds get very slow, you’ll need a stabilizer to eliminate camera shake and with the larger f-stops, get crisp images with deep focus (and deep focus night photography is startling in itself). What you want to try for is shutter speeds from 1/8 to 2 or 3 seconds with an f-stop of at least f/5.6 and by meeting this goal (which is arbitrary, as the level of DOF is subjective to what you want to show the viewer) you can obtain startlingly clear images in the a majority of night or low-light situation.

Photo by John A Ryan

Spot Meter

One of the keys to getting properly illuminated night photographs is mastering the spot meter that’s built into your camera (and if you happen not to have one, then you need to pick up a hand-held one). You can use the spot meter to find your subject and properly expose it — even when it’s at the edge of darkness. The TTL spot meter will give you a reading that you can adjust to shift the exposure (change the aperture and/or shutter speed) so objects that are partially obscured or weakly lit can register as 1/2 or more stops into the over-exposure scale

Photo by Eric Wood

Longer Shutter Speeds

We’ve all seen those night shots of roadways with endless streams of continue lights from head & tail lights, and that’s a fairly simple effect to achieve (stop down to maybe f/16 with a shutter speed of 6 second or more). However, you want to be innovative, you want to make connections that aren’t obviously apparent — try moving your subject with longer shutter speeds and you’ll get a “ghost” image, and you can specifically illuminate a subject with a flashing light to “shape it” during a long exposure.

Photo by Ren West

Composition

When devising a photographic composition, how you intend to draw the viewer’s eye is determined by the shape, the lighting, the color of the subject(s) and how the viewer perceives the subject. In night photography where there are large pools of black (or incredibly deep shadows), finding a subject and give it the proper attention through exposure is what your goal should be. Remember, even if you’re shooting a diner in the desert at night, selecting the “right” exposure will enable the light to extend beyond what your eye can see; the light dance on the dust in the air and your photo will sparkle.

Top image by wiserbailey

Chris Derrick is a writer, photographer, screenwriter and director living and working in Los Angeles. He studied film production and screenwriting at the University of Southern California, and continued to expand his photographic knowledge through classes at the Art Center College of Design.

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9 Comments

Miles Maker said:

Thanks for this.

Do the same rules apply to motion pictures in low light? What are the similarities/differences in achieving a quality image on video in low light? What are some quick fixes to insufficient lighting situations when shooting on video?

Miles Maker
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Dee said:

This is so helpful! Thank you for sharing! =)
Christopher Derrick said:

@Miles Maker. Motion picture or video lighting is a more complicated animal, because you can’t really change your shutter speed, and unless you’re shooting with 35mm film, you’ll have trouble “pushing” video to resolve for a better image. Video doesn’t have the latitude of film – motion picture or still – so when you’re shooting low light video, you have to pay attention to the fact that the image will fall faster into black and the highlights will blow-out faster and sharper.

Many of the same tips and techniques that I mentioned above are directly applicable to motion picture image capture.

Here’s a tip for shooting video in low light — expose for the highlights (which is what you do with slide film btw) as this will enable you to capture as much image information as possible, adn if you need to push the image (add noise) you can, but it might not be pleasant. Anyway, find those bright elements of the frame and set your f/stop so that part of the frame is maybe 1 1/2 or 2 stops over-exposed (more than that and the camera can’t handle it), and then look to bring up the light level for the rest of the scene.

Use a china ball or something similar to do that; a china ball raises the light level in a soft, even way which is very pleasing for video. China balls increase the “warmth” of your image, so you can stick with that or make a white balance adjustment. Direct light challenges your latitude too much with video, particularly when you have a low light levels in the background.
Mr. Vincent Sebastian said:

It is good one great experences to learn thanks a lot.
Hedy said:

Nice tutorial :)
I have made some night photography here : http://www.hedydargere.fr
Alessandro Pucci said:

I hope to make practice on my next night fishing session. Thanks for sharing
Taylor Guyton said:

Thanks for the help. I never thought about using a tripod to stabilizing my low light shots. I was told that adjusting my shutter speed can create really interesting shot but never tried so it’s cool to actually see some photos of it.
Brett Bell said:

From viewing the blog I learned two major things. This first is is how to shoot streams of light from moving objects like cars. The second is that while I knew a tripod would stabilize a camera, I didnt think to use a tripod and slower shudder speed to get a better picture. I wish I had known this months ago while I was in a local park with my family trying to take pictures at night. Sadly we had to give up as we found no way to take a clear picture. Thanks for the help!
KedR said:

Thanks for sharing these wonderful tips Chris. Wish the release of Canon 5D III, low light photography (atleast for Canon users) just got to another level!
:D