Baby Photography Tip #3: Low light
This question has come up a couple of ways lately, probably because it’s the dark of winter and so many times we’re taking photographs with low light. Or perhaps it’s because people got new gadgets, like flashes, for Christmas and they’re trying to figure out how and when to use them!
In any case, I’ll explain a few things about low light and describe the settings I chose for this image of a newborn in a bowl. It wasn’t a really dark day, but it was mid to late afternoon in December and the ambient light wasn’t ideal.
That may seem surprising, because in my studio, I have huge south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows. Even still, in winter, or late afternoon, I sometimes have to supplement with some studio lighting. Plus, here in London, we get a lot of grey days…
So, what are the options, and is the first reaction of many people (to turn on the flash), the best or only one? I’d argue there are 5 things to think about, and the answer probably lies in a combination of them if you want to avoid the harsh light a flash can often produce:
1. Add more light to the scene
If you can, this is the first and obvious answer. The more ambient light you can get in the scene, the better chance you can shoot without a flash. And if you still require a flash, it won’t need to be as harsh.
How to do this?
- Take a look at where you get natural light coming into your home. Natural light is such a bright source that moving from the middle of the room to nearer the window will make a dramatic difference to your light readings and therefore ability to take a photo. Turning on an indoor light just doesn’t compare to getting closer to a natural source of light! If you have an SLR, look at your camera readings as you move closer to the window and you’ll see this in numbers.
- (For the photo of the baby in the bowl that I posted, you can see here my first test shot of the bowl by itself – it was quite dark, so I moved maybe one metre closer to the window, and it made a lot of difference, as you can see in the final shot, which had almost the same settings)
- Figure out what time of day you get natural light through your windows and time your photographs around that. In summer, the sun is high enough in the sky that I get good strong light throughout the day in my studio; but for a few weeks in the depths of winter, it’s so low in the sky that it gets blocked by buildings in the middle of the day and the available light falls. So I try to shoot before or after that period for those weeks.
- Once you’ve got good natural light coming in, ensure your subject is facing, at least in part, toward it (and you’re between the window and the subject, but without causing a shadow).
- Think about the light in the background. One of the challenges of low light is that you end up optimising for the subject, against a poorly lit background. Adding more ambient light in the background will help raise the overall image and make the contrast between your subject and the background much more pleasing.
2. Change your ISO
The ISO relates to what we call “film speed”, when using physical film in cameras. It measures how sensitive the film is to light. Some film is more sensitive to light, and therefore needs less light to capture an image. We can this “faster” film.
So, why don’t we always just use “fast” film? Graininess. The faster the film, the grainier the image, and for the most part, we don’t want that. (Of course, some film types are inherently grainier and photographers may select them for a particular look and feel … but for the average user, a nice detailed image, without too much graininess, is what they are after).
Today’s digital cameras still incorporate this feature and still have the same speed / graininess trade-off. But there are 2 differences. First, because it’s just a switch on your camera not an entire roll of film, it’s easier to move between film speeds. You can shoot a single image at 1000 ISO, without having to shoot 23 more to finish the roll. That’s a major advantage. Second, the camera companies are putting a lot of emphasis on ISO in their new models: the race is on to see who can give you the best image at higher film speeds. Most cameras these days offer a range of ISOs, sometimes up to 6400! Realistically, these are pretty grain-free up to 400 ISO, with a bit of grain gradually sneaking in thereafter, though often still quite ok up until 2000, and even beyond with good editing software.
In the image of the baby in the bowl (and the test image without the baby), I raised the film speed to 320. Because I was able to move the baby into more light, I was able to work with ISO 320 and still later enlarge the image to 20x30”, without much grain at all!
3. Shoot with a wide aperture
This can get into a complex discussion, which I’ll try to avoid for simplicity and brevity … and I’ll expand on a few of these points in future blogs. And if you’re shooting on automatic, you don’t need to think about this, as your camera is doing it for you. But if you’re interested in knowing what it’s doing, read on.
What we’re talking about here is how much light is getting through the opening in the lens which acts like the pupil of your eye. The wider it is, the more light that gets in. The narrower it is, the less light that gets in. So, in low light, if you set this opening very wide, you’ll let in as much light as possible – exactly what you need. You’ll see this in your camera settings by looking at the f-stop. Confusingly, the lower the number, the wider the “pupil” of your lens: f/2.0 is a wide pupil and f/22.0 a narrow one.
Playing with this, though, adjusts other things in the image: the aperture is one of the key elements that determine the depth-of-field of the image. I’ll explain this in another blog, but in brief, the depth-of-field is how much is in focus versus blurry in the image. The wider the pupil/aperture, the more blurriness. This can be a good thing for portraits, but at an extreme, it can be too much. So, playing with the aperture will probably not be the only tool you’ll use to deal with low light.
In my image of the baby in the bowl, I used f/1.6 for the test shot, and f/1.4 for the actual shot. This worked because I wanted a shallow depth of field. Not all cameras/lenses can go that wide however, and if I’d tried to shoot at f/2.8 or so, I wouldn’t have had enough light. As it was, these 3 things together (moving closer to the natural light, using ISO 320, and using a wide aperture), allowed me to shoot without studio lights / flash.
4. Using a longer shutter speed and a tripod
If you were taking a photograph of a still object, this would be an obvious option, so I’ve included it here for completeness. Plus, it’s fun to play with! Leaving the shutter open for longer and letting more light in will allow you to continue using a slower (lower) film speed and a narrower aperture (smaller f-stop number). The key is that if you have to leave it open for very long (and we’re talking fractions of a second), you may shake and blur the image. Lenses with image stabilisation are great, but at some point, you need a tripod. With a tripod, you can expose it for as long as you need!
Then the question becomes about the subject. In general, you want to minimise movement in the subject, so you would use this for still objects. For children, this can only mean those that are deeply sleeping or watching TV, as they never otherwise sit still. But the other way to think about this is as a way to capture movement – to capture some still objects or people in contrast to moving ones. With a long exposure, the still ones are in focus and the moving ones create a blur through the image. For some shots, that could be a great effect.
Sometimes these things happen by accident and in another blog, I’ll write more about that – because sometimes accidents can be fabulous!
5. Using a flash
This is often what point and shoot cameras do automatically, but it’s usually the last thing I play with, since I don’t really like camera-mounted flashes. But it is an easy way to add light to a scene.
Most cameras with built-in flashes allow you some degree of control – it’s worth playing with the settings to see what options there are. For example, you may be able to select fill-in flash, which you use in order not to have too harsh a flash and to light a near subject against a backdrop which itself is better lit.
If you have a camera-mounted flash that you can adjust, you have far more control over the amount of light it produces, and hopefully, where it’s pointed. The more you can adjust the flash to bounce the light off walls and ceilings, rather than point directly at your subject, the better it will be. And if you can, it’s often good to get a little plastic cover for the flash that softens the light a bit, so the image is less harsh. (Taping some white paper over it can also work)
So those are 5 things to think about playing with when photographing your kids in low light. I often end up using a bit of each: increasing the amount of light in the scene, raising the ISO to 400 or 800, using f/2.8 or so, and trying hard not to shake my camera! For portraits in the studio, I’d rarely use an ISO above 400, as I’d add light with studio lights that I can soften sufficiently; but when doing travel photography, I almost never pull out my flash, and instead would play with the ISO, the aperture, and potentially a tripod. It depends what you’re shooting, but in most cases, the answer lies in a combination of these tools.
