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- Much of the difficulties we face as photographers when taking a photo is related to lack of light.
- Darkness is the number one enemy of all photographers.
- The scarcity of light is what forces us to resort to the use of flash.
- With the consequent disadvantage of the excess light assumed by the flash.
- Lack of light is what makes it possible for blurry photos to be obtained in the camera’s automatic mode.
My intention with this article is that you understand the mechanism behind capturing a photo, and that you can get properly lit photos even in situations of lack of light. With a few resources at hand, darkness should no longer be a problem at all.
I will try to convey ideas using a simple and clear language of complex technicality, however, you will see that throughout the article I mean some important photographic concepts such as shutter speed or ISO sensitivity, if you are not comfortable with these concepts, I recommend you take a look at “Your first steps in SLR photography”, a book that I suppose you will have already received if you are a VIP reader of the blog.
Finally, to tell you that this text was written in a way applicable to a DSLR camera, however, some ideas and resources might also apply to other types of cameras that offer manual and semi-manual modes.
The photograph is light. For our eyes to see the things around us, we need light to illuminate them.
The same goes for photography. The camera is only capable of distinguishing (and recording) visible things, objects or subjects illuminated by a certain type of light, whether natural or artificial. Having light is photography.
The operation of an SLR camera is inspired by nature itself, especially in the human eye. Our eyes also need light to be able to see things: the pupils would be equivalent to the lens of an SLR camera, the retina would be something like the sensor on which the image is projected, and the brain, in a way. then, the memory card.
As I said, light is the main element that makes photography possible, light (from the window or any other source) bounces off objects and then passes into the camera, penetrates it through the lens and finishes projected onto the sensor.
It’s a journey as you can see, the journey of light that bounces off things and embarks on a journey (at lightning speed) until it reaches our room. Obviously, I’m telling you in a much more simplified way than the way it actually happens, but the underlying idea is as follows.
Now that you know the basic concept, let’s look at situations where darkness insists on annoying photos and how to get out successfully.
Here’s a list of some situations that could make your photos go wrong, all these situations originate from the dark, I explain below:
1) The night Nothing to explain here. Night means the absence of natural sunlight, making photography difficult. Fortunately, there is a small invention called ‘Flash’, which somehow resolves this situation of darkness, but often the flash leaves a greasy effect on the subject’s skin, creates too much light and also has very important limitations because it is only able to illuminate at a certain distance.
2) Sunrise and sunset Sunrise and sunset: two beautiful moments from the photographic aesthetic point of view, however the little light available at sunrise and sunset makes the camera suffer a little, the most common result is usually a blurred photo.
3) Long-range focal lenses In equal conditions, a 300mm focal lens will be much darker than a 35mm lens. Working with high focal lengths reduces the amount of light that reaches the camera and therefore the photo is dark or blurry.
4) Rooms and dark rooms Obviously, a room without windows, or with windows that do not face the outside (but an interior courtyard of the building for example) presents a serious problem for the photographer, such parts generally do not have the necessary light levels for the camera to capture the photo correctly. Just because you can see with some ease inside the room doesn’t necessarily mean the camera can do it just as easily as you do.
5) Forests and closed natural spaces Naturally (and never better said) nature?Or leafy prevents the sun’s rays from entering. If you walk with your camera in the middle of a dense forest in search of small animals or plants to photograph, you have to face the problem of lack of light.
6) Accessories that obstruct the passage of light It is likely that any accessories we add to the target will obstruct the passage of light. Most of these accessories are generally good or even necessary in certain situations: for example, I can’t take pictures of landscapes without my polarizing filter. However, if we run the risk of taking dark photos, if we miss the light, it would be best to release the lens of all these accessories.
Among these accessories, which are the most cumbersome?For light are filters (polarizers, neutral density ,?) as well as extension tubes, so always use them carefully, and in case of doubt it is better to remove them.
7) Exposure settings Sometimes the exposure settings of your camera can make life more difficult, the cameras allow us to increase or reduce the exposure levels, as we want, but it is common that we leave the exposure level low forgetting and we break head without knowing why the photos are dark.
You may have identified with more than one situation I just described, but don’t worry, the frustrations are over. Here’s the ultimate survival kit. It’s a series of accessories, gestures and sometimes simple gestures with which you can easily defeat this feared enemy called Darkness.
A) Shutter speed Believe it or not, time is an effective weapon against the dark, and very cheap by the way, it simply lengthens the time that the photo is closed or recorded, if at first we said that the photo is made by penetrating the light into the camera through the lens, what if we let that light in for a long time?Well, surely more light would come in.
This is accomplished using manual camera mode (M mode on most SLR cameras) or at least semi-manual shutter speed mode (S mode on Nikons, ‘Tv’ in Canon and other brands) and choosing a relatively long shutter For example, if for a scene with the amount of light needed we need a shutter speed of 1/100 s, if we took the same photo but with the darkest scene, twice darker for example, we would have to slow down. the shutter speed by lowering it to 1/50 for example, or even slower, until we find the correct speed.
Note that the slower the shutter, the more light finally enters and accumulates. It’s like leaving a glass under a water tap, the glass will fill twice as much water if you leave the faucet open for 2 seconds as if it were gone open only one.
B) The king of lenses So I call these 35mm and 50mm fixed focal length lenses whose aperture of the diaphragm is f/1. 4, this type of lenses has the merit of letting in a lot of light, simply because their aperture is larger. Returning to the previous example of water and glass, the glass would be filled twice with water under a high-speed faucet as under a low-flow tap. The wider the flow, the more water will be obtained. Well, in SLR cameras the same thing happens: the greater the aperture of the lens, the more light penetrates (more information about why I like this lens here).
Note of consolation: if you don’t have a lens, take a look at this article, you will love it, if you can’t afford it, nothing happens, in theory this rule can be applied to any lens, albeit less efficiently: just set the camera at as wide a lens aperture as possible (small value of f / . . . Maybe in your case it is f / 3. 5 or f / 4. It doesn’t matter, the main thing is to keep this value low.
C) Defeating the Dark tripod is almost impossible if you don’t have a good tripod. As I said before, one way to get more light is to use slow shutter speeds, and say as an example of leaving the glass under a tap for a long time, which would allow us to get more water, or light, if we talk about cameras. But what good would it do to let the faucet run for a long time if we held the glass with our shaky hand?The glass moved all the time and did not fill with water or not fill well.
In photography something similar happens: if to capture a greater amount of light we select a relatively slow shutter speed, we must make sure that the camera does not move in the slightest during that period, yes, it is a very small time, fractions of a second, but still there are certain movements, very small, that make the light disperse within the camera and project a confusing and blurry image.
The solution is to stabilize the camera on a good tripod, which will allow us to collect all this light in a stable way, thus obtaining an ultra-sharp image. (Learn more about tripods, with another one of my recommendations, here)
D) ISO The ISO value in DSLR cameras refers to the sensitivity of the camera sensor to light. It can be modified. By selecting a high ISO value, we make the camera more sensitive to light, i. e. with the same amount of light, the camera can capture double or triple or any amount of light depending on the ISO value we have increased.
This is very useful in low light situations. If, after exhausting all the resources of this survival kit, we still find the photo too dark, increasing the ISO value may solve the problem.
In a normal DSLR camera, the normal ISO value is usually approximately 100; If necessary, you can gradually increase it to 200, 400 and so on until you find the correct value; However, keep in mind that the higher the ISO, the more noise you’ll get in the photo, so add it only when needed and have no choice.
Each of the above resources will help you combat the lack of light in your photos, but imagine combining them all at once, this is what I do personally every time I have a vital photo of those where I can’t fail, I try to take things carefully, be very well prepared and combine the following:
Work with all this? At the same time it gives me a lot of flexibility and even allows me to choose the amount of light that I want, in addition, as you can see on the chart, I give a little more importance to the great opening. lens f/1. 4 because it really saved me more than one upset several times.
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