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Introduction
A good part of the difficulties that we face as photographers when taking a photo are related to the lack of light. Darkness is the number one enemy of all photographers. The lack of light is what makes us have to resort to the use of the flash, with the consequent inconvenience of the excess of light that the flash supposes. The lack of light is what makes us get blurry photos in the automatic mode of the camera.
My intention with this article is for you to understand the mechanism behind capturing a photo, and for you to be able to obtain correctly lit photos, even in low-light situations. Having a few resources within our reach, the darkness should no longer be a problem at all.
I will try to transmit the ideas using a plain language that is free of complex technicalities. However, you will see that throughout the article I refer to some important photographic concepts such as shutter speed or ISO sensitivity. If you do not feel comfortable with these concepts, I recommend you take a look at “Your First Steps in SLR Photography”, a book that I suppose you have already received if you are a VIP Reader of the blog.
Finally, let me tell you that this text was written in a way applicable to a digital SLR camera, however some ideas and resources could be equally applicable to other types of cameras that offer manual and semi-manual modes.
The key concept
Photography is light.
In order for our eyes to see the things around us, we need light to illuminate them.
The same thing happens with photography. The camera is only capable of distinguishing (and recording) visible things, objects or subjects illuminated by some kind of light, be it natural or artificial.
When there is light, there is photography.
The way in which an SLR camera works is inspired by nature itself, specifically by the human eye. Our eyes also need light to be able to see things: the pupils would be equivalent to the lens of a reflex camera, the retina would be something like the sensor on which the image is projected, and the brain, in a way, the memory card.
As I said, light is the main component that makes photography possible. The light (coming from the window or from any other source) bounces off the objects to later go to the camera, penetrate it through the lens, and end up being projected on the sensor.
It is a journey as you can see, the journey of light that bounces off things and starts a journey (at lightning speeds) until it finds its way into our camera. Obviously I’m telling you in a much more simplified way than how it actually happens, but the basic idea is that.
Common risk situations
Now that you know the basic concept, let’s go on to see those situations in which the darkness insists on bothering us with our photos, and how to get out of them.
Here is a list of a few situations that will make your photos go wrong. All these situations have their origin in the dark, I explain it to you below:
1) The night
Nothing to explain here. Night means the absence of natural sunlight, which makes photography a challenge. Fortunately, there is a small invention called “Flash”, which solves this dark situation a bit, but often the flash leaves an oily effect on the subject’s skin, creates too much light, and also has very important limitations since it is only capable of to illuminate at a certain distance.
2) Sunrise and sunset
Sunrise and sunset: two magnificent moments from a photographic aesthetic point of view, however the little amount of light available during sunrise and sunset makes the camera suffer a bit. The most frequent result is usually a blurred photo.
3) Long focal length lenses
All other things being equal a 300mm focal length lens will be much darker than a 35mm one. Working with high focal lengths causes the amount of light that reaches the camera to decrease and therefore the photo is dark or blurred.
4) Rooms and dark rooms
Naturally, a room without windows, or with windows that do not open to the outside (but to an interior courtyard of the building, for example) presents a serious problem for the photographer. These types of rooms do not usually have the light levels necessary for the camera to capture the photo correctly. The fact that you can see with some ease inside the room does not necessarily mean that the camera can do it with the same ease as you.
5) Forests and closed natural places
Naturally (and never better said) the “closed” or leafy nature inhibits the entry of the sun’s rays. If you walk with your camera in the middle of a dense forest in search of small animals or plants to photograph, you will have to face the problem of lack of light.
6) Accessories that obstruct the passage of light
Any accessory that we add to the lens is likely to obstruct the path of light. Most of these accessories are usually good, and even necessary in some situations: for example I can’t shoot landscape photos without my polarizing filter. However, if we run the risk of obtaining dark photos, if we miss the light, it would be best to free the lens of all these accessories.
Of these accessories that I am mentioning, the ones that are the most “cumbersome” for light are the filters (polarizing, neutral density, …) as well as the extension tubes, so always use them with care, and when in doubt, it is better to remove them.
7) Exposure settings
Sometimes your camera’s own exposure settings can make your life more complicated. Photo cameras allow us to increase the exposure levels or reduce them, as we see fit, but it is common for us to leave the exposure level low due to forgetfulness and we are racking our brains not knowing why the photos come out dark.
How to take good photos in dark situations
You will have felt identified with more than one situation that I have just described. But don’t worry, the frustrations are over. Here is the ultimate survival kit. It is a series of accessories, measures and sometimes simple gestures with which you will easily defeat that feared enemy called Darkness.
A) Shutter speed
Believe it or not, time is an effective weapon against the dark, and a very cheap one indeed. It simply consists of lengthening the time during which the photo is shuttered or recorded. If at the beginning we said that the photo is achieved by the penetration of light into the camera through the lens, what would happen if we let this light enter for an extended period of time? Well, surely more light would enter.
This is achieved by using the camera’s manual mode (“M” mode on most DSLRs) or at least semi-manual Shutter Speed mode (“S” mode on Nikons, “Tv” on Canons, and other brands) and choosing a relatively long shutter speed. For example, if for a scene with the necessary amount of light we need a shutter speed of 1/100s, if we had to shoot the same photo but with the scene darker, twice as dark for example, we would have to slow down the shutter speed lowering it to 1/50s for example, or even slower, until you find the right speed.
Remember, the slower the shutter, the more light ends up entering and accumulating. It is like leaving a glass under a water tap, the glass will fill twice as much water if we leave the tap open for 2 seconds than if we leave it open for only one.
B) The King of Goals
That’s what I like to call these 35mm and 50mm prime lenses whose aperture is f/1.4. This type of lens has the virtue of allowing a huge amount of light to enter, simply because its aperture is larger. Going back to the previous example of the water and the glass, the glass would fill twice as much water under a high-flow faucet as under a low-flow one. The wider the flow, the more water is achieved.
Well, in SLR cameras the same thing happens, the larger the lens opening, the more light enters. (More on why I love this lens here.)
Consolation Note: If you don’t have one of these goals, take a look at this article, you’ll love it. If you can’t afford one, that’s fine, in theory this rule can be applied to any lens, albeit less effectively: just set the camera to as wide a lens aperture as possible (small f/.. value) . Maybe in your case it is f/3.5, or f/4. It doesn’t matter, the main thing is to keep that value small.
C) The tripod
Beating the dark is almost impossible if we don’t have a good tripod. As I said before, one of the ways to get more light is to use slow shutter speeds, and I gave the 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 would be the use of leaving the tap running for a long time if we hold the glass with a trembling hand? The glass would move all the time and it would not fill with water, or it would not fill well.
Something similar happens in photography: if to capture a greater amount of light we select a relatively slow shutter speed, we have to make sure that the camera does not move at all during that period of time. Yes, it is a very short time, fractions of a second, but even so, certain movements are produced, very small, that cause the “captured” light to disperse inside the camera and project a confused, blurred image.
The solution is to stabilize the camera on a good tripod which will allow us to collect all that light in a stable way, thus achieving an ultra-sharp image. (More info on tripods, with some other recommendations of mine, here).
D)ISO
The ISO value in DSLR cameras refers to how sensitive the camera sensor is to light. Can be modified. Selecting a high ISO value makes the camera more sensitive to light. In other words, with the same amount of light the camera will be able to capture double or triple or the amount of light depending on the ISO value that we have raised.
This is very useful in low light situations. If having exhausted all the resources of this kit of…