Low Light Photography Tips for Amazing Shots

I’ve got a serious love affair with long exposure photography, but there are plenty of times when long exposures just aren’t the ideal way to photograph something at night or in very dim low light. In this guide, we’ll go over several tips on how to take photos in low light without a flash.

In all but the most ideal lighting conditions, photographic exposure is all about tradeoffs, and photographers must decide whether to adjust ISO, shutter speed, or aperture. In very low lighting conditions when photographing a scene with movement where using flash is either not desired or not possible — for instance, when photographing a wild animal at dusk or at a concert, church, or wedding where flash photography is prohibited, it’s important to know how to adjust your camera’s settings manually in order to capture the best photo possible, even when the light isn’t ideal.

If you’re unfamiliar with the basics of exposure and how ISO, aperture, and shutter speed are the three important variables that we can change to adjust a photo’s exposure, you can learn more in these lessons in the Photography Course section:

1. Aperture’s Affect on Exposure

2. How Shutter Speed Affects Exposure

3. ISO Speed Settings

Adjust the Aperture

When dealing with situations where we have very limited light, one of the first things you can do is to increase your aperture by decreasing the F-Stop number. During the day, you might be able to use an aperture setting of f/11, but as the light falls, you’ll need to increase the size of the aperture to allow as much light to reach the camera’s sensor as possible. On some lenses like the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM Lens or the Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G Lens, the maximum aperture is quite wide, meaning that these lenses can gather a lot of light, even in low light conditions without using a flash.

Other lenses like the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM Lens have a smaller maximum aperture, meaning that a photographer using this lens at its maximum aperture would need to adjust either the ISO or shutter speed once the light became to dim.

One potential downside to using a wide maximum aperture is that your depth of field becomes very shallow. Depth of field refers to how wide or narrow the area in focus is — essentially, how much of your scene is in focus. Smaller apertures, such as f/11 or f/22 result in a wider depth of field where more of both the foreground, middleground, and background of a scene are in focus. At a very wide aperture like f/1.4 or f/1.8 only a small plane of the image will be sharply in focus. When photographing moving subjects, a shallow depth of field can make things tricky, because if your subject is only a small distance outside of this in-focus area, it can be very out of focus.

Adjust the Shutter Speed

To allow more light to reach the sensor, one obvious solution is to extend the time the shutter is left open. Using a longer exposure time, in conjunction with a stabilizing method like a tripod is a great way to achieve properly exposed photos without needing to modify the aperture or ISO settings even in very dim light. The potential downside to a slow shutter speed for capturing moving subjects in low light is motion blur — in order for your subjects to be frozen in place with the details sharp, you’ll need to use a sufficiently fast shutter speed. For instance, if you’re trying to capture a photo of a heron flying overhead after the sun has set, you’d likely need to use a shutter speed of at least 1/200th – the closer the moving subject is to you and your camera, the faster your shutter speed will need to be to adequately freeze it.

Adjust the ISO

When you increase the ISO setting/speed on your camera, let’s say from ISO 100 to ISO 1600, you’re increasing the signal gain, boosting the amplification of the light information recorded by the sensor. As with adjusting other exposure variables, higher ISO settings come with their own drawback: increased noise. The higher you increase your ISO, the more noise you’ll see in your image.

Many newer digital cameras like the Sony a7 III, Nikon D850, and Canon 5D IV are able to deliver very clean, low noise photos even at significantly high ISOs, but older digital cameras often display undesirable amounts of noise at ISO 800 and above. While increased digital noise isn’t ideal, using a high ISO speed allows you to utilize faster shutter speeds than might otherwise be possible in low light conditions. It’s almost always preferable to take a photo in low light with lots of noise where the subject is still identifiable than a photo with low noise but with a subject blurred by motion.

Use Image Stabilization

Many newer camera lenses make use of image stabilization technology, providing 2 to 4.5 stops of compensation for camera shake. What this means is that with a lens like the Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6 G VR II which offers up to 4 stops of vibration reduction, a photographer might be able to capture a crisp shot at 1/15th whereas without vibration reduction enabled, they might need to use a shutter speed of 1/125th to ensure a sharp photo. Some digital cameras like the Pentax K3 II and Sony a7R III have built in image stabilization, allowing even older manual-focus lenses used on these camera bodies to benefit from this technology. It’s important to note that if you’re using a tripod, you should turn image stabilization OFF — IS is designed to correct for small movements when handholding your camera, but when your camera is mounted on a tripod, Image Stabilization can actually result in blurry images. For capturing sharp photos in low light without using a flash or tripod though, image stabilization can be a major help and can help you capture photos that would otherwise be very difficult to take.

While image stabilization is a fantastic technology, one thing it can’t account for is subject movement. Using a slow shutter speed made possible by image stabilization in low light might ensure that the rest of the image is sharp, but the subject moving through the frame will inevitably be blurry if the shutter speed is too slow to freeze the movement. If you want to ensure a sharp moving subject, the only option is to increase the shutter speed or use a flash. In low lighting conditions, this will usually mean you’ll need to increase the aperture to let more light in or increase the ISO to boost the signal gain of the sensor. If you choose to use a flash, keep in mind that the effective range of a camera flash is limited. A camera flash is well suited to freeze the motion of someone dancing just a meter or two in front of you, but it will do nothing to freeze the action of a car going past 30 meters away.

Use a Tripod

For static subjects that aren’t going anywhere, using a tripod is one of the easiest and most effective methods you can use to stabilize your camera in low light. A tripod allows you to limit your reliance on changing the ISO – for instance, if you’re shooting a cityscape in the low light of the evening, you can keep your ISO at only 100 and increase the exposure time to ensure a properly exposed photo.

While there are tripods to fit every budget and niche application, most photographers don’t need to spend a fortune on a tripod to get good results. These five highly rated tripods all come in at under $200:

1. JOBY GorillaPod 3K Kit (supports camera setups up to 6.6lbs)

2. JOBY GorillaPod 5K Kit (supports camera setups up to 11lbs)

3. Dolica GX600B200 Proline (supports camera setups up to 15lbs)

4. Vanguard Alta Pro 263AB 100 (supports camera setups up to 15.4lbs)

5. MeFOTO Classic Aluminum Roadtrip Travel Tripod (supports camera setups up to 17.6lbs)

Simplified Tips for Low Light Photography without Flash