Details in low light

[shifty_uk]

Apologies if there's a thread on this already!

I'm looking for tips and tricks for dealing with low light situations.

A big aspect of my 'photography' is post-processing which always suffers in my low light shots because of grain and lack of detailing to push out - obvious answer to this would be using a flash but in natural light what kind of settings or tricks should I strive for?

Higher ISO(generally circa 1000), slower shutter speed being the obvious - which fails if there's any motion in the shot, I don't like the blurring.

Cheers

 

[Throttle]

hi shifty, good quality low light images is a bit of a balancing act that has been going on since photography was invented. It often ends up being a compromise and as the photographer you have to make a judgement on which settings will give the best result.

1,iso; as you have found increasing the sensitivity of the camera by increasing the iso
allows you to maintain shutter speed or aperture at the expense of noise and detail in
shadow areas . The same effect happens with film.

2, shutter speed; if the subject is not moving a longer shutter speed will let in more light at the expense of needing a tripod or lens stabilisation if slower than your chosen lens focal length.

3, aperture; high quality lens with the ability to use a wide apertures ie f1.8 will allow more light at the expense of depth of field . Prime lens tend to feature wider apertures.

4, quality of your camera; as time has gone on the camera manufactures have improved the ability to deal with low light greatly.

5, its important to add that from my experience images that show excessive noise on your monitor will actually look great when printed. So its often better to get the shot using a higher iso than to use to slow a shutter speed and get blurred images.

hope this helps

 

[a1ex2001]

The absolute key thing is to get the exposure as close to right as possible to minimise your post processing and to use the lowest iso you can get away with if you plan to manipulate the image heavily. Right in this context just means as close to your desired end result as you can as soon as you start pushing your exposure in post to boost shadow detail for example you will have problems.

 

[An Exception]

Unless your images are falling apart, I think the grain in low light adds to the character. Sometimes imperfection is perfection.

 

[pingu666]

I did read a article recently about over exposing then fixing in post, as sensors capture more highlight detail than lowlight, I've not tried it yet.
a fast lens and or flash will help
you can get manual 50mm primes cheaply

 

[-|ScottFree|-]

Well the higher the ISO the more noise you will introduce, (Noise not grain, they are different.. grain can be beautiful)

Tripod mounting will allow you stabilise your shots and use a slower shutter... that really is all you can do... Using noise reduction can help, but nothing is better than the lowest ISO and an increase in shutter speed.

 

[Hunders]

What are you photographing? For landscapes and still photography I sometimes take two photographs, one exposed for highlights and another for shadows and then I'll blend them in Photoshop.