Ok. Here's a picture I shot last year of Helen and Madelyn during "Earth Hour" ( http://www.earthhour.org/ ), the global event where we turn out the lights to show our commitment of changing our ways to help save our resources, our planet and our children's future world.
Of course you can use Flash to get around many low-light situations like this (and I'll eventually write an entry for that and link it here.), but since this was Earth Hour, the whole point was to turn out the lights and thus be in the "dark". So, if I wanted to capture the "mood" of the event, I'd have to do it with nothing more than the light provided by two candles.
Here's how I did it.
1) Pump up the ISO.
The first line of attack in situations like this is to turn up the ISO setting on your camera, which in essence is the setting that controls the "sensitivity" of the sensor in your camera. Instead of having the camera set to ISO 200 or 400, try turning it up to ISO 800, 1600 or even higher. By turning up the ISO in your camera, the camera can get an adequately exposed picture faster than at lower ISO settings and thus helps to reduce the chance of a blurry picture caused by your subject moving or camera shake. Now, the images will get a little noisy / grainy as you turn up the ISO, but often capturing an intimate picture in dark moody lighting with less "motion blur" is worth it. And to me, the noise / grain is not unlike the feel of high speed film and gives the picture a very "artistic" look. In the picture above, I had my Pentax K100D camera set to ISO 3200, it's maximum ISO setting. If you zoom into the picture, you will noticed that the image is pretty grainy, but in this case I prefer that then having a blurry image. Now-a-days, cameras can go up to ISO 6400, 12800 or even higher, so their ability to capture amazing images in "low-light" is drastically improved over models released even just a few years ago.
2) Open up the Aperture.
The next thing to look at is making your camera use the biggest aperture size (or close to it) that it can. Check to see if your camera allows you to control the aperture setting on your camera. By opening up the aperture, you are setting the lens to allow the most amount of light through, which allows the sensor in your camera to capture the image as fast as it can. To control the aperture on dSLR (and some point-and-shoot) cameras select the Aperture Priority mode and change the aperture to the lowest number (such as f2.8 or f3.5 -- These will be the biggest aperture sizes). If your camera doesn't have an "Aperture Priority" mode, see if it has some sort of night mode, which will probably tell the camera to use the biggest aperture it can.
3) Go wide.
Standard Zoom lenses, such as the ones that come as kit lenses with dSLR cameras, or the lenses built into most point-and-shoot cameras are actually "faster" at their widest setting rather than their longest setting. As an example the standard 18-55 mm lens that comes with many dSLR cameras will let in more light at 18 mm (and let the camera capture an adequately exposed image faster) than at 55 mm (where less light gets through the lens and thus the camera takes longer to get an adequately exposed image.) In the image up top I used my Pentax 28-80 mm lens at a focal length of 28 mm (it's widest setting) so that the maximum aperture would be f3.5 (which is fairly good for a standard lens) rather than being f5.6 which it would have been if I had been zoomed in at a focal length of 80 mm.
4) Get a fast lens
Now, you could also get a "faster" lens for your camera which will let in more light, allowing your camera to capture the image faster, but this is quite an expensive option since "fast" lenses sell for many times more than their "standard" (aka slower) counter parts. For example, this Sigma 24-70 f2.8 lens ( http://www.sigmaphoto.com/shop/24-70mm-f28-if-ex-dg-hsm-sigma ) or this Sigma 70-200 f2.8 lens ( http://www.sigmaphoto.com/shop/70-200mm-f28-ex-dg-os-hsm-sigma ). Many professionals will have these type of lenses since it offers better quality and more flexibility in how they capture an image. If you have the budget, definitely take a look at these lenses. It will allow you to maximize your available light photography as well as open up creative possibilities galore. Now, if you don't want to spend this much on fast lenses, be happy that the newer cameras coming out have really fast ISO levels now, so you're able to take great pictures in low light with the cheaper "standard" lenses!
5) Maximize available light
If you have some control over the environment and your subject, look for available light sources that you can use. This may be a window that has a nice stream of light coming through, a lamp that your subject can be moved closer to (or the lamp moved closer to your subject). In the picture above, I simply asked Helen and Madelyn to move closer (but not too close) to the candles so that the only available light (the two candles) provided the most light possible on their faces. Now, you may not have control over the situation so that is when you use all the above tricks as much as possible.
6) Under expose slightly (and fix it up in post production)
Now, I don't use this trick much. But if I don't mention it, someone will probably point out that I didn't mention it. Basically this trick entails slightly underexposing the picture (which you can easily do by setting the exposure compensation on your camera to -0.7 (or so), if your camera has exposure compensation.) What happens is the camera slightly "under exposes" your picture which will help to reduce blur. But since it's under exposed, it will appear too dark. That is when you have to load it up into a photo editing software (such as Google's Picasa -- see my post here.) and brighten it up again. I've personally found that I haven't really been happy with how the images turn out after this trick, so I only use this as a really last resort. And with cameras coming out with ever increasing ISO sensitivity, I believe there will be even less need to resort to this trick as time goes on.
7) Do none of the above
On the other extreme, if blur is not a concern (because your subject or scene is relatively motionless, or blur is ok) you can use a lower ISO setting and a smaller aperture. The benefits to this is that A) You get better image quality at a lower ISO setting because the signal to noise ratio of your sensor is better and B) You will get a sharper picture with a smaller aperture because the depth of field is greater, thus more of the scene is in focus. But in order to be able to use a lower ISO setting and smaller aperture, you will need to give the camera a long time to get the exposure which can lead to a blurry picture. To reduce camera shake, use a tripod.
As an example, here's a picture I took one evening. Since everything in the scene was relatively still, I set-up my camera on a tripod, lowered the sensitivity of my camera down to ISO 200 and used a really small aperture size of F11. With these settings, the camera needed 15 (long) seconds to capture the image. If there was anyone in this scene, they would have been reduced to a blurry blob.
This last point shows that there can be different ways to approach taking pictures in low-light. So, if I'm putting my camera on one of those smart auto modes like "night mode", which approach is it taking? For the most part, it will probably take the high ISO approach. My philosophy is that if you learn a bit about how the camera's settings affect the end picture and picture quality, you can take more control over your camera and have more creative power over it.
Now, there are many situations where you will want to take pictures in low-light situations without flash. This may range from sporting events where flash is not allowed (such as the gymnastic meets my daughter attends) to school plays where sometimes the constant blast of a flash in a dark room might interfere with the enjoyment of the play to times where you just want to capture the intimate feeling of the environment and not completely replace it with the over powering effect of flash. Regardless of why you want to take low-light pictures without flash, now you have a frame work to explore these available light opportunities.
Take care,
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com
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