Low Light & Vivid Sydney Photography

Taking good pictures in low light

Taking good photos at night doesn’t have to be a mystery. Experiment. In the digital age it is easy and economical to experiment.

In your imagination create an image of what you’d like a scene to look like. If you’re still unsure about all the settings take a guess, capture a frame and then change just one of the 3 settings.

Look at the difference it made. If it looks more to what you had envisioned, awesome, make some notes and keep experimenting.

There is nothing to lose with digital photography with quirky outcomes, they can look very interesting and creative. If you don’t like them, just hit delete and take more shots just for the fun of experimenting.

Advanced Night photography Technique

For an advanced photography exercise try this idea. At night have a friend spin around an LED Hula Hoop or Twirling sticks, if they are not available tie a string around the base of a small torch and spin it around with a long shutter speed with the camera and on a tripod.

Setting example of 3 seconds opened shutter, ISO 1200 and F3.5.

What you’re likely to get is a ring of white light drawn on the sensor.

Now to light up the person spinning the light use a flash with either rear curtain firing or manually fire the flash in hand with enough power to light up the person while at the same time creating light trails. Best of both at night.

Clear sharp main subject and long exposure. Check out the photo below.

Low Light Portrait Photography

Low light portraits can be challenging for both intermediate and more advanced photographers.

What helps in taking sharp photos for portraits is to sacrifice image detail with a faster shutter speed if you need too.

For example if you were photographing a still life image you could use;

F4 + ISO400 + 4 second shutter speed.

For a portrait try these settings instead;

F2.8 + ISO1600 + 1/50 second shutter speed.

With a steady hand and motionless model you’ll have a good chance of a good sharp photo.

Make minor adjustments for your specific lighting conditions as needed. See above advanced portrait example.

Mix Low Light with Flash Photography

We use flash or Speed light as Nikon calls them at most of our shoots, indoor or outdoor, dimly lit room or bright full sun, we like using them. Check out our Event Photography tips page for more details.

So when the need arises for blending of the two it can certainly achieve a great result with careful consideration.

This is more of an advanced photography technique by when achieved you are doing well at mastering control over the photo output.

A use case for mixing flash at night time or in a dim light setting is when you’d like to capture a city skyline photo with the buildings all lit up pretty in the background and also capture bright crisp photos of people in the foreground.

Not easy but when the settings are dialled in, the photos look great.

What is Low Key Photography?

Low key photography is a style that is confused with low light photography. Not necessarily the case. For example.

Low key photos can be taken in bright light but by using different camera settings with some artificial light such as powerful flashes or strobes. Low key style photos can be achieved with plenty of light in the room for you to easily read a book. Low key photography is not the same as low light photography.