Photography newbie - low light conditions

Brum Man

Brum Man

Brum Man

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Joined
30 Jan 2004
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So I've recently picked up a DSLR (650D) as I'm interested in trying out a bit of photography as a hobby. I've been outside over the past couple of days taking some pics in various settings but one thing I'm struggling with is getting the pictures looking bright enough in what have been dull, overcast conditions.

I've been using a mix of auto and manual settings in attempt to actually get some pictures of the places I'm visiting (auto) and also understand how certain setting effect the pictures (manual).

When using auto it seems to pretty much constantly default to ISO100, F6-7 and 1/125-200 shutter speed, which leaves the pictures really dark (my girlfriends point and shoot look a lot brighter). Now as far as I'm aware I can increase the brightness in a three ways (?):

1) increase the ISO
2) decrease the F number
3) decrease the shutter speed

I'm happy to play around with the settings over time but I'm just surprised at how bad the automatic settings are a getting the brightness up, is this normal or am I missing something?

Also, any advice on which settings would be the most effective to alter as a starting point?

Some quick examples below (excuse the rubbish photos, I am after all a complete beginner :D).

Thanks for any advice!





 
I'm a newbie to :) . What I noticed on my camera on auto is the ISO would go to a lot higher setting in low light (1600 or so), maybe you have the ISO set to manual and locked on 100.
 
The buildings being dark in 2nd and third, I would guess are because of the bright sky, and the camera trying to balance that out with the whole scene.

To get the building brighter, you would effectively need to over expose the sky I think.

Or use HDR.
 
Yep it's definitely on auto, I've been playing around with a bit and setting it on a fixed number and back so pretty sure it's not that.
 
OK so had another play around with it yesterday and it definitely wasn't stuck on a particular ISO as I shoved it on auto and took some shots underground at the Roman Baths in Bath and it went up to 6400 :P

Had a further play around outside and set the shots up myself and playing around with the shutter speed/F-stop whilst keeping the ISO set to 100/200 and managed to get the lighting OK, it just seems to me that auto was setting the shutter speed to high and not getting enough light in to expose the shots.

Points noted regarding the sky being too bright to expose the building properly, I guess even though it's overcast the clounds might still be refelecting a lot of light back

Ho hum, I'll play around some more as I'm sure there are more overcast days to come!
 
Put it in av mode set apature to lowest value will be 3.5 for the kit lens at wide end, set iso to auto, check if minimum shutter speed is set too high 1/60 should do, make sure exposure compensation is at 0, check what metering mode is set to (set to matrix), take a test picture of something in light conditions that dosnt have a bright sky or window in most of the frame.
 
if you are using Auto (which you should not really do) find and use "exposure compensation" and dial it up a bit: this will tell the camera to let in more light then it thinks

If your in Manual, you can control the amount of light and just practice until you get what you want (bigger aperture/ slower shutter / higher ISO)

best option is to get used to using AV mode where you choose the aperture/camera does the shutter (and use exposure compensation as well)
 
It also looking like you've got the light balance set to tungsten or indoors. You pic look a bit blue.

Is it a new dSLR or used. If it's used I would find out how to return it to factory settings, otherwise it could be doing all shorts of crazy [expletive denoting excrement].
 
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Cheers for the tips. I appreciate that Using Auto is not really the way to go but this is literally the first time picking up an SLR so just thought I'd use it until I got used to where all the buttons were.

Yesterday about 70% of the shots I tool were in full Manual mode, and where I got a shot I liked I switched it to Auto to compare how it came out and found that I generally did a better job.

Agreed with the (very) blue twinge, especially on the car! I'll go and check our the light balance now.

It's new, but it was also a display model (cheap cheap) so your right that it may have had the settings messed around with.
 
The EXIF says it was set to manual. I always just set mine to auto, regardless of the lighting. If you shoot in RAW, wb doesn't matter because that can be changed in post.
 
I checked in the settings this morning and it was set to 'Flouresent' so I'm assuming the camera was expecting some dodgy lighting.

I should also clarify what I meant by Auto, it was set to P (hence my ability to change some of the settings), but with all the individual settings set to auto with, it seems, the exception of white balance!

Thanks for your help guys.
 
Leave WB on auto and set exposure compensation to +1/3 as it seems your camera likes to underexpose to protect highlights that would would normally lose in JPEG but can be easily recovered in RAW.
 
Brum Man: How are you editing your photos ? (if you are)

if you are serious about photography you should invest in Lightroom and then you will be able to edit your photos
 
AV is definitely the setting to have the camera on. Set the camera back to defaults as it was set up to use inside the shop. Auto setting is not the best unless you are in a hurry with a shot.s
 
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I would agree with the others that using Aperture priority (Av) and then adding or subtracting exposure compensation is the most hassle-free way to go for when you're out and about. Again, make sure your white balance is set to auto to ensure you don't get that blue or yellow caste to your images (this can be corrected in editing if you shoot in RAW rather than jpeg).

Also, canon cameras tend to weight the exposure pretty heavily to the active focus point (even in evaluative mode), so if that happens to land on a particularly dark or bright area then the rest of the image might be over/under exposed respectively.
 
Paul11 said:
How are you editing your photos? (if you are)

If you are serious about photography you should invest in Lightroom and then you will be able to edit your photos
Click to expand...

I'm not at the moment, those pics were straight of the camera and resized. Am planning on getting Lightroom to enable me to edit phots in the future but I'm using the gf's laptop at the moment waiting for Apple to get their act together and release the the new rMBP so can't purchase it immediately! I think I was surprised at how poor the 'standard' shot came out with no manaul adjustments.

It seems the white balance being set to auto was the setting that was ruining it, which I've now set to auto so hopefully this should fix it and I'll shoot in JPEG + RAW so I have the RAW to play around with in the future.

AV is definitely the setting to have the camera on. Set the camera back to defaults as it wa set up to use inside the shop. Auto setting is not the best unless you are in a hurry with a shot
Click to expand...

I would agree with the others that using Aperture priority (Av) and then adding or subtracting exposure compensation is the most hassle-free way to go for when you're out and about. Again, make sure your white balance is set to auto to ensure you don't get that blue or yellow caste to your images (this can be corrected in editing if you shoot in RAW rather than jpeg)
Click to expand...

Cheers for the advice, looks like Av is the best way to get 'quick snaps' when I just want to use the camera with as little hasstle as possible, and switch it manual when I want to play around with the lighting etc when I have a little more time.
 
Brum Man said:
Cheers for the advice, looks like Av is the best way to get 'quick snaps' when I just want to use the camera with as little hasstle as possible, and switch it manual when I want to play around with the lighting etc when I have a little more time.
Click to expand...



I wouldn't say that at all, aperture priority is probably used 90% of the time by 80-90% of professional photographers. The other exposure mode will be shutter priority.

Controlling the DoF is one of the most fundamental aspects of photography and is what most photographers will want to control most of the time. Cameras can not fundamental predict what DoF and thus aperture you require for the scene as that is dependent on whatever artistic and stylistic design parameters the photographer has in mind. Most of the time shutter speed is irrelevant, we just want a shutter speed fast enough to provide sharp images and stop subject motion - one controls this by changing the ISO (and occasionally small adjustments to aperture to balance use of high DoF).
There are times when you want to control the shutter speed directly, mostly related to motion - either enhancing or avoiding the effects of motion. When shooting sports you typically want a high shutter speed >= 1/500th second to prevent subjection motion blur so one might lock down the desired shutter speed and let the camera figure out the aperture. However in this case unless you have a load of light the camera will nearly always select the widest possible aperture and then the ISO is bumped to match desired shutter speed. So you get the same behavior by sing aperture priority with aperture wide open and using auto ISO with the desired shutter speed keyed in.
Sometimes you want a long shutter speed to enhance the motion of people, vehicles, rivers, etc so you set a longer shutter speed and let the camera pick the aperture. But you have to be careful because you don't want the apertures too small to cause diffraction so what one tends to do is go back to Av mode, set the desired aperture and add ND filters to increase exposure time.

When using a flash things change slightly with more manual control becoming appealing but not drastically so.

Don't get into this weird ideology that you have to set the camera to fully Manual - few professionals will do that on a regular basis for standard photography. E.g, I bet you if you asked all the wedding photographers on OCUK what they do and they will almost always use aperture priority, use exposure compensation to correct exposure errors. With experience you will know when and how much EC to dial in before ever taking the photo.
 
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