Low Light Photography

At our last camera club meeting we had a short discussion on taking photographs in low light. This was as a prelude to our forthcoming Flagstaff Hill night visit on the 27 th October. Lots of good ideas were suggested by members. I am sure there are many websites that can be found as well. Here are a few of the ideas suggested. Please feel free to add other ideas and suggestions.

• Try using a tripod so that you can keep the ISO down. On a tripod you can use the inbuilt timer or a cable release to avoid camera movement.
• Many cameras have inbuilt noise reduction, but this can slow down the camera. A 30s exposure may need up to another 30s to process, so shooting becomes very slow. Check out the software you use, noise reduction may be better done on your computer.
• You can experiment with added light. Take a torch to paint a scene, or an off-camera flash could be used.
• Night scenes are very contrasty. HDR could be worth a try. Remember, change shutter speed not the F-stop or you could have different depths of field.
• If you put the ISO down low and the F stop high you can force a long exposure to be necessary. If you then open the aperture you could walk in front, stop a while then keep walking and create a ghost.
• Practise working in the dark before the night.
• Take a torch so that you can see to change settings on your camera.
• It isn’t that hard to do, the photos below were taken with a 3 Mpixel Kodak camera in 2003 with camera just resting on objects and the timer used.

Graham