Get GREAT PHOTOS in BAD LIGHT!

Summary

Simon d'Entremont's video offers expert advice on capturing stunning photos even in bad lighting conditions. He stresses that light is crucial for photography, but photographers often hesitate to shoot in low light. Simon provides practical tips for improving results without perfect conditions, including using longer shutter speeds, wider apertures, and adjusting the scene's brightness. He also shares creative techniques, demonstrating how to embrace the artistic potential of low light with examples like long exposure and intentional blur. Throughout, he encourages photographers to experiment boldly instead of avoiding less-than-ideal settings.

Highlights

• Simon emphasizes the importance of understanding light for successful photography 🌞
• Tips include using a tripod and timers to reduce camera shake in low light 📷
• Combining shutter speed, aperture, and subject brightness optimizes photo quality 🌅
• Strategies for low-light scenarios, such as indoor or dark environments, are shared 🌌
• Creative uses of blur and movement in photos add dynamic flair 📸

Key Takeaways

• Embrace the challenge of shooting in bad light for creative photo opportunities 📸
• Longer shutter speeds allow more light, improving photo quality even in low light 🌟
• Wider apertures (lower f-numbers) let in more light but affect focus depth 🎯
• Moving subjects require unique strategies, like strategic positioning and stabilizers 🏃
• Great results can be achieved with thoughtful processing and equipment choices 💡

Overview

In Simon d'Entremont's latest video, he tackles the tricky but rewarding world of low-light photography. Often, photographers shy away from shooting in less than optimal light, fearing poor quality results. However, Simon encourages us to see these challenging conditions as an opportunity to explore creativity and expand our skills. His practical advice equips us to take on the darkness with confidence.

The video delves into a variety of techniques to enhance photo quality even in bad light. Simon walks us through the benefits of longer shutter speeds, wider apertures, and positioning subjects strategically. He even advises on the use of additional light sources and post-processing techniques to further refine your shots. Ultimately, these methods can transform what seems like a limitation into a creative advantage.

Beyond technical tweaks, Simon also emphasizes the artistic potential of low light. He highlights how photographers can use deliberate blur and movement to create compelling and dynamic images. His infectious enthusiasm and expert guidance inspire us to grab our cameras and experiment without fear, proving that bad light doesn't have to mean bad photos.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Importance of Light The chapter titled 'Introduction and Importance of Light' highlights the critical role of light in photography. It emphasizes that both the quantity and quality of light significantly influence photographers' equipment choices, settings, and overall results. The transcript begins with a promotion for Squarespace and then delves into the concept that light can be both abundant and scarce, posing challenges for photographers. It humorously mentions that this predicament can turn some photographers into 'light snobs,' who are meticulous about their lighting conditions.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Challenges and Nature of Low-Light Photography This chapter explores the challenges and creativity involved in low-light photography. It contrasts last week's focus on harsh light with this week's focus on insufficient light, highlighting the difficulties and strategies for achieving excellent results even in poor lighting conditions. The chapter also critiques the reliance on perfect lighting for photography, urging a broader creative approach that doesn't always prioritize perfect image quality.
• 02:30 - 04:00: Tips for Shooting in Low Light In this chapter, the author provides tips on shooting photos in low light conditions, using a $400 camera. Simal Donal makes weekly videos on photo tips and behind-the-scenes insights on wildlife and nature photography. The chapter encourages subscribing for more content. It also mentions common challenges faced in low light photography, such as those encountered indoors, in music venues, or during nighttime outdoor shoots.
• 04:00 - 07:00: Using Shutter Speed in Low Light This chapter discusses the challenges of using shutter speed in low light conditions. It begins by acknowledging that photos taken in such settings can have poor quality, even for professional photographers. The primary reason is the increase in ISO levels, which introduces noise into images. Noise reduces both sharpness and contrast by obscuring photo details. Additionally, colors tend to be muted in low light because cameras capture less reflected light, affecting the overall color quality.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Aperture and Depth of Field in Low Light The chapter titled 'Aperture and Depth of Field in Low Light' discusses the challenges faced while capturing subjects in low-light conditions. It explains how light bouncing off subjects is dull and flat in such conditions, which results in dull, flat images with a lower dynamic range. The chapter suggests that to address these issues and capture better images in low light, it's essential to get more light onto the camera sensor. It emphasizes that increasing the ISO is not a solution and instead implies that there are only three effective methods to achieve better lighting.
• 10:00 - 14:00: Positioning and Lighting Techniques This chapter discusses techniques for getting more light onto your camera sensor, which includes using longer shutter speeds, larger apertures, or shooting brighter subjects. It also clarifies that ISO acts as a volume knob to brighten images post-capture. The chapter references a demo photo shot in dark conditions with a high ISO, highlighting the resulting issues like lack of contrast.
• 14:00 - 18:00: Dealing with Noise in Low-Light Photos This chapter discusses handling noise in low-light photography. It emphasizes the importance of lighting on both the subject and the camera sensor. To address noise issues, one can use longer shutter speeds, which allows more light to enter, improving photo quality. Doubling the shutter duration doubles the light captured, while doubling it again quadruples the light. Demonstrating these principles, the chapter highlights how adjusting the shutter speed and ISO can significantly enhance image quality.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Creative Opportunities in Low Light The chapter 'Creative Opportunities in Low Light' discusses techniques to enhance photography in low light conditions. It notes that even if a scene's lighting hasn't changed, improvements can be noticed in color, clarity, and sharpness. A key challenge in low light is the long shutter speed required to capture more light, which can make handheld shots difficult. The chapter suggests using a tripod to stabilize the camera and a 2-second timer to achieve the sharpest image possible.
• 21:00 - 23:00: Gear Recommendations for Low Light The chapter discusses strategies for taking photos in low light conditions, emphasizing the use of a tripod to minimize camera shake. It warns against using slow shutter speeds with moving subjects, as this results in blur, and suggests this method for static scenes like landscapes, waterfalls, architecture, or stationary subjects to maintain sharpness.
• 23:00 - 25:00: Conclusion and Encouragement The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Encouragement' provides practical tips for improving photography skills, particularly when using a tripod and slow shutter speeds. It emphasizes the importance of instructing subjects to remain still to achieve sharp images, even with longer exposure times. Additionally, it advises photographers to use wider focal lengths or increase distance from the subject to minimize motion blur and improve image clarity. These techniques are particularly useful for achieving better results in photography, encouraging readers to implement these strategies for improved outcomes.

Get GREAT PHOTOS in BAD LIGHT! Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this video is brought to you by Squarespace if you need a website or domain visit squarespace.com hey everyone and welcome to a new video as photographers we come to realize over time that light is our most precious resource its quality and quantity dictate all our equipment choices settings and greatly impact our results the problem is we often need just the right amount of light too much is a problem and too little is a problem too this can turn some of us into light snobs that is photographers who only go
• 00:30 - 01:00 out when the light is perfect last week I made a video on shooting in harsh light the too much end of the spectrum this week's video is about the not enough light problem that is shooting in bad or low light and how to get great results even if the light is downright awful that's because I feel if our photography strategy is to only go out in the best light it not only limits how often we can go out but limits our creativity if our only goal is to get that perfect shot great photos don't all need to be about amazing image quality
• 01:00 - 01:30 don't forget to stay for my bonus tip where I'll explain how I got this photo in low light with a $400 camera my name is simal Donal and I make weekly videos giving you photo tips or taking you behind the scenes for wildlife and nature photography subscribe if you want to see [Music] more now most of us have noticed in the past that when the light is low like indoors or in dark environments like music venues or outside when it's dark
• 01:30 - 02:00 and gray and gloomy our photos don't come out very nice let's look at why bad light is bad for photo quality and often yields poor results even for professional photographers first low light which is usually reflected in the use of higher and higher isos leads to noisy images noise robs our photos of both sharpness and contrast as they muddy up the photo details second colors are muted in low light as our cameras are actually recording light reflecting
• 02:00 - 02:30 in from our subjects in low light the light bouncing off our subjects is dull and flat so that's what we record and third in low light our camera records a lower dynamic range than in good light and in a still properly exposed photo reduces the darkness of our darks and the highlights of our lights this makes the photos look dull and flat so let's get the fundamental straight here to solve the issue of shooting in low light we need to get more light onto our sensor there are only three ways to do this and know a higher ISO isn't one of
• 02:30 - 03:00 them getting more light on your sensor comes from one of the following longer shutter speeds larger apertures or brighter subjects ISO is just a volume knob or gain on your camera to brighten the exposure after the photo is taken if that sounds confusing you can see my video on that right here but make sure you come back if I show you this sample photo of my owl model shot in dark conditions you'll see that it looks pretty bad my ISO is 51,200 last lack of contrast lack of
• 03:00 - 03:30 details and muted colors yuck we need more light on our subject and on our camera sensor to fix this here are some tips the first tip is to get more light onto our sensor using longer shutter speeds the longer the shutter is open the more light that comes in improving the quality of our photo doubling the duration of the shutter speed will double the amount of light doubling again will quadruple the amount of light notice that if I increase the length of the shutter speed to here dropping the ISO here the aowl looks much better as
• 03:30 - 04:00 the colors Clarity and sharpness have all improved even if nothing has changed in the scene but there are a few tricks to make this work first if your scene is very dark the shutter speeds needed to get lots of light on your subject may be long like over a second that makes handholding even with image stabilized sensors very difficult that means using a tripod one of the most helpful Tools in lowl light photography set up your camera on the tripod and use the 2cond timer to get the sharp possible image
• 04:00 - 04:30 this minimizes any Shake by you pressing the shutter button second there's an Associated issue with using a tripod and slow shutter speeds and that's that you can't have moving targets while you're using long exposure times your subject will move while the shutter is open creating blur in your photo now while this can be used creatively in lots of ways most of us want our subjects to be sharp in our photos as such the tripod strategy is best used on static or very slow moving targets Landscapes waterfalls architecture or product
• 04:30 - 05:00 photography are examples here's a couple of extra tricks to make this work first if you're photographing a person and using a tripod and very slow shutter speeds ask them to stay very still for the shot if they stand still enough even at 1 second even if you need to try a few attempts you can get a Sharp Photo secondly the longer the focal length you use or the closer you stand to your subject the faster things move around in the field of view so use a wider focal length or stand far far the back from
• 05:00 - 05:30 your subject and movement will be less apparent so shoot a photo of a person that fills the frame with a 35 mm lens rather than shoot a Head and Shoulder shot at 85 mm for example the movement will be less and less risk of blur in your photo and also turn on lens and sensor stabilization if you have it it will allow for sharper photos with longer shutter speeds but note that it won't freeze subject movement just camera movement the next way to get more light on your sensor is to shoot at wider aperture that is smaller F numbers
• 05:30 - 06:00 on the aperture settings of your lens this opens up the diaphragm of your lens allowing more light for a given shutter speed opening the lens aperture by One Stop will double the amount of light on your sensor so shoot a lens at F4 rather than f5.6 or at f2.8 rather than F4 here's a shot of my owl buddy shot at f1.6 versus f8 I started with note that this is over 20 times more light a huge difference the image has much more
• 06:00 - 06:30 clarity and details and just looks better now this Choice comes with a trade-off as all exposure settings on a camera seems to have if you shoot at a wide aperture you will have a thinner depth of field that is the part of the photo in Focus will be thin if you want that look with a blurry background Which is popular in portraits or Wildlife for example no problem but if you're shooting a landscape or a group of people and you want everything in Focus this strategy will have drawbacks as everything in the photo may not be in Focus there are some workarounds though
• 06:30 - 07:00 in Landscapes if you're handy with Photoshop you can use a technique called focus stacking that's where you take photographs of various parts of the image with a thin depth of field but merge the various parts of the image together in Photoshop to make the whole image in Focus that's what I did in this photo of sunflowers and the Milky Way I needed to shoot them all at a very wide openen aperture so I could freeze the flowers moving in the wind as well as get enough light for the Milky Way which is very dim so one shot of my image was
• 07:00 - 07:30 focused here another here and another here I merged them all together to make this final image I'd like to thank the sponsor of this video Squarespace I use Squarespace to make my very own website and it was really easy they have lots of templates to choose from or you can customize pages with easy drag and drop sections for photos clickable buttons text or links when I recently added a new Wildlife photography course to my offerings it was easy to add a new page to my website with photos videos or drop in text box boes wherever I wanted one
• 07:30 - 08:00 you can even get people to subscribe to your newsletter and offer them a free download in return if you wish head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com Simon to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain if you're shooting a group of people or other subjects in poor light with a wide open aperture remember that your depth of field is thin as such try to get everyone lined up on the same plane so they're all being focused at the at the same time rather than having people
• 08:00 - 08:30 front and back line them up side to side note also that on many zoom lenses the aperture is larger at the wide end than in the zoomed in end so shoot wider and you can get more light in with those types of lenses now once you've lengthened the shutter speed as much as you can and still get a sharp photo or you've opened up the aperture as much as you can there's only one way left to get more photons onto your sensor and that's for your subject to be brighter for subjects that can move like your portrait model your car or your kids
• 08:30 - 09:00 getting them to better light is an option if they're in the really dark shade like an underground parking lot get them to The Brighter edge of the parking lot maybe Expos to some reflected light from the outside or take them outside to a brighter location if you're indoors bring them to a window and get some light from the outside but don't shoot them standing as a silhouette at the window go off to one side along one wall and get the light on the side of their faces coming from the window if your location is fixed next try adding some light reflectors are
• 09:00 - 09:30 often used in portrait photography bouncing some natural light from a window or a sunlight onto your subject try the silver side for cool light the golden side for warmer tones of course flashes are a great way to add light to a dark scene a few tips though if you overlash your subject in a dark scene it just doesn't look natural less is often more just fill in the shadows more than illuminate something that was dark to start with bouncing your flash from a side or a ceiling is Al a great strategy
• 09:30 - 10:00 to soften the light and not get those dreaded red eyes although lots of image processing programs can fix this for you another light source is an LED panel like this one getting one where you can adjust the color temperature that is the white balance is a great feature that way you can adjust it to fit the scene many have a way to attach it to a small tripod so you can have it at an angle which is often much nicer than head-on just a quick note that if you sign up for my email list I'll send you a free guide on how to shoot in backl situations Link in the description below
• 10:00 - 10:30 so let's see you've tried all those things and you're stuck with what you've got that's often my situation as a wildlife photographer when photographing foxes right after sunset for example I may use one/ 200th of a second shutter speed the bare minimum I can get sharp photos with and I can't ask the fox to stand still for a second I also shoot my lens wide open at F4 which is as wide as it gets and I don't use Flash on foxes for ethical reasons so I have two options shoot less than perfect image quality photos or go home up to ISO
• 10:30 - 11:00 12,800 I keep shooting but when I get home my photos need some work to look their best a few tips first don't over sharpen your noisy photos in processing you're just sharpening the noise and making it look worse if your processing software has a feature to select the subject like Lightroom use that to select the subject and only sharpen the subject and that just a bit don't make it crunchy looking and don't sharpen the background where the noise is more easily visible rather select the background if you can
• 11:00 - 11:30 and add noise reduction more aggressively there even if you don't want to overly fuss with complex processing techniques and just want to add noise reduction to your photo it's perfectly fine to do that in Lightroom which I use a lot just slide the noise reduction slider until the noise is cleaned up but not so much that the detail in your subject is all gone I also use thirdparty software like topaz products that are great for removing noise without losing too much detail in your photo all in one step another tip for noisy images from poor light is
• 11:30 - 12:00 don't over crop your images the more you zoom in on the noise the worse it looks like in this example keep your crops wider and find compositions that don't need to be cropped later the more you can use the whole image the better and finally many photos shot in poor like lack dynamic range that is the differences in tones from lights to darks you can add some life back into these photos by lowering the blacks a bit raising the whites a bit and adding some contrast that will make the photo look like it has a wider range of tones
• 12:00 - 12:30 in the photo giving it some new life for my next tip just like I said in my video on shooting in harsh light the same tip applies to shooting in bad light embrace it turn it into a positive in low light and fast action you can use the blur of movement as a creative tool let the subject move in the frame and get a sense of action shoot cars with slow shutter speeds to make them look like they're going fast or let the water move in a waterfall or a Seascape photo to add some action to otherwise static Target or shoot fireworks on a tripod
• 12:30 - 13:00 for 3 or 4 seconds to get some nice movement and if you shoot 3 or 4 second exposures of Aurora take hundreds of shots of them using an intervalometer and Stitch them together to make a time lapse like I did here while in my videos I usually don't try to instill in you the desire to buy more gear my motto is use what you have if you really want to get good photos of a situation that's important to you like your kid's basketball in a gym what should you do many people will suggest to get a new camera I actually think a new lens is more often the answer if you want to buy
• 13:00 - 13:30 gear for lowlight photography larger aperture lenses can allow for much more light and will often add sharpness to your photos over the kit lens that came with your camera and buying used lenses is also okay as they usually last a long time and keep their value well as the technology refresh cycle is much slower than for camera bodies a 70 to 200 f2.8 for example is a great lens in a dark gym or for weddings in a dark church or hall or for indoor most manufacturers make an inexpensive 50mm f1.8 usually
• 13:30 - 14:00 called the nifty50 an amazing lens for the money or for milky ways I use an f1.4 lens that lets in eight times more light than F4 I use that plus a tripod to get shots like these and to give you an extreme example you put a $115,000 lens like this on a $400 camera and you can get this shot like this shot of mine sure the cheaper M50 camera I bought used didn't have the dynamic range of my
• 14:00 - 14:30 full frame so this little spot on the breast was blown out so shoot me the point is a great lens can turn an average camera into an amazing one if the topic of noisy images has you intrigued check out my video on digital image noise what creates it and how to control it which you can check out right here if you enjoy this video please give it a like and YouTube will share it with other photographers struggling with bad light and I hope you can go out the very next outing in bad light and still come home home with great images I know you
• 14:30 - 15:00 can do it