5 Tips to Improve Your Photography in Low Light

Shooting in low light can be tricky for lots of reasons ranging from needing slower shutter speeds to having difficulty acquiring focus. If that is something you struggle with in your own work, this helpful video will give you some great tips to improve your low-light photography.

Coming to you from Dan Watson, this excellent video will give you five tips to improve your low-light photography. Personally, I think the most important thing to remember is to not be afraid of using a higher ISO. It is pretty common for photographers to push the boundaries of low shutter speed in an attempt to keep the ISO lower, and that is, of course, a good goal at which to aim. However, it is important not to slow your shutter so much that you risk losing the photo to motion blur or camera shake; remember that a sharp and grainy image is always better than a blurry one. If you have already opened your aperture as wide as possible, be willing to bump up your ISO in addition to lowering your shutter speed, particularly if you are shooting action that needs to be sharp. Check out the video above for lots of helpful tips. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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"it is important not to slow your shutter so much that you risk losing the photo to motion blur or camera shake"
Excellent point.
Despite being a 16-year veteran of low-light event photography, I really learned this lesson just a few years ago when I found some images shot in really low light slightly soft. I had attributed it to loss of detail from pushing ISO too high. But, when I examined the images and EXIF data closely, I found that shooting even slow-moving subjects at 1/focal length was the culprit, even with effective IS. I subsequently bumped ISO one stop and shot at 1/2x focal length, and voilà, sharper, more detailed images. With noise reduction software now so good, it is possible to get usable images at higher ISO settings than some of us might realize.