Have you ever been asked to shoot an event or any photograph and struggle to shoot the scene properly, resulting in motion blurred and underexposed images? There are many beginners try to resort it with a pop up or external flash to lighten a scene with low ambient light. Unfortunately, the image usually result in unsightly shadow, also bring the unnatural light to the scene that you are trying to capture. It’s more trouble than it’s worth!

There are a couple of ways to overcome difficulties with low light photography:

ISO: With the higher value of ISO, the more sensitive the camera’s sensor is to light. High ISO settings are a must in order to use hand held shutter speeds. At low light environment, you need to set the ISO as high as you can without seeing image noise.

Remember, Image noise will appear significantly if you increase the ISO setting. Unless it is the only shot that useful for an important event, nobody are keen on editing a noisy image. If you do get a large amount of noise, just clean it up in post processing by running a despeckle filter or something similar.

Aperture: To balance your low light images, there are another awesome way. Having a lens with wider aperture (lower F number) setting could be expensive. However, if the lens can reach these wide aperture, you can get a great shot at night easily.

Remember, at wider aperture setting, less of your image will be in focus. A wide aperture also makes it more difficult for your camera to auto-focus, especially in low light. As a result you may need to use manual instead of it.

Shutter speed: It is also an important setting in low light environment. Remember that shutter speed below 120/s will produce blur, even your subject is moving at a slow and steady speed. The slower of your shutter speed, the brighter your images would come out, but the greater the risk of motion blur.

Remember, to prevent the risk of motion blur, you may need to steady your camera by using a tripod. However, sometimes it’s impractical to use the tripod. You can set your camera on a steady surface, like a table, a wall or the floor.

If you want to capture a scene low light, please make sure you are capturing the scene in RAW format. This not only increase the level of detail you are capturing, but also enhance the effectiveness of any post-production to remove the image noise.