Street Gaming. D810 with 50mm f/1.4G fast aperture prime lens. Settings: 1/60, ISO 3200, f/1.4.
Introduction
I have an affinity with night and low light photography going back at least a decade and longer. In this article I want to discuss capturing portraits in low light - either candid or more posed type images and then we can briefly contrast that with how to approach posed setups with a view to professionally light a subject with speedlights or strobes. The rules are the same for both. If we have a flash we can create light anywhere. There are some basic techniques to get the best fidelity out of a flash and I will discuss that here. If we don’t have a flash, we can look for the best light in a scene and either position our subject in that area, or wait until they physically occupy that space. The forerunning picture in this article is of my son who, of one evening got out of the car still playing his Nintendo Switch console. It is shot entirely in available light. I started to unpack the car and as I turned round, he perched himself onto the wall as we see here. Never being one to miss a beautiful moment, I grabbed my D810 which I had in the car (I nearly always have a camera with me wherever a go). I had my 50mm f/1.4G attached. All I did was line up the background and subject, position myself at the correct height (very important) and the rest is history as they say. He is holding a package that his transformer toy came in, that from memory he opened in the car. I could have motioned him to move that or take it away from him; but then it wouldn’t have been a real moment. I would have interfered with something that looks great without my spin on it. It’s much the same way I shoot weddings. I see so many photographers directing the bride and groom, like they are on some Hollywood film set. Their day becomes about parading about doing the same old cliche shots, and ends up being a vision the photographer had of the day, rather than what actually naturally occured. In my mind, true reportage / candid photography should be respected and left as such, and it’s an ethos I hold dearly in my shooting technique.
Girl in Field - Nikon D800 with 135 f/2DC Prime Lens. Fast Primes produce a very unique look, whether it be low light or outdoor daylight shooting.
Shot Discipline
Shot Discipline is absolutely crucial to understand in order to master this craft and type of shooting. Shot discipline is about ensuring our settings make logical sense, and thus are gathering the most light, the best colour, the lowest noise and the highest quality overall rendering of our subject and scene in the process. Before you go any further, it is best you understand this on a deeper level. Read the full article on this here. Consider and remember that shooting in available light does not necessarily just mean low light, however. It just sets the boundary that no additional light is used. For available light shooting outdoors, it becomes a simple venture of mostly base ISO work and the shutter speed that will stop motion. This is quite easy to setup, and this shared article will help you attain these rules.
But ‘High ISO’ is so good now
It really grinds my gears when I read this on photography forums. Do not ever take advice from people telling you that aperture doesn’t matter anymore because ‘high iso’ is so good now. They are speaking about higher iso’s being cleaner and more useable than over a decade ago. That is true, however it doesn’t change the fact that shot discipline and the right lenses will give noticeably better results. It doesn’t change that photography is light, and aperture is one of the corner stones of getting good quantities of light to the sensor. Don’t hamper yourself in low light by shooting with f/4 lenses. Don’t stop down f/1.4 prime lenses to f/5.6 in low light to get depth of field at the penalty of huge amounts of noise unless you are using flash or strobes. Use composition, light, subject and timing to make your photograph stand out. For my thoughts on noise, read my article on that here.
Equipment
Ideally we want a full frame camera such as the Nikon D810 (highly recommended). And a fast aperture prime lens, a 50mm f/1,4 is a good start. We want a full frame camera, because they collect more light as they have big sensors, and this brings greater noise performance along with the rest of it. We want a short to medium focal length (28-85mm) with a fast aperture. We don’t want a really long focal length, at least not yet. Hand holdable shutter speeds are easier with short lenses, more on this concept later. Equipment I recommend for these tasks…
24mm f/1.4G / 24mm f/1.8G
50mm f/1.4G / 50mm f/1.4D / 50mm f/1.8D / 50mm f/1.8G
85mnm f/1.4D / 85mm f/1.8D / 85mm f/1.8G / 85mm f/1.4G
Any 35/1.4 is also a good choice.
Available Light
Shooting with available light is the first thing most people do when they obtain a fast aperture prime lens; and who could blame them? However, to get really good at this and for the pictures to make logical sense, we need to consider light a lot more than the average person does. Quantity, Quality, Direction. These three things are paramount. Sometimes we won’t be able to have all three, in fact, often we won’t. We might only have two, and a great subject. With the right timing, and a little bit of composition know-how we have ourselves a great picture. Read more about timing and composition in my previous article here.
Wedding Girl. Nion D700 with 24mm f/2.8D prime lens
Light Quality and Quantity / Direction
A very important topic is the quality, amount and direction of our light on our subject. Hard light sources tend to produce more focused beams of light, and hard shadows with fall off. Hard light sources generally come from smaller light sources, at distance to the subject and are usually less diffused (hence the name). Soft light, is generally generated by light that is diffused through a diffuser such as a fabric, a cloth, curtain, blind, umbrella (in posed shooting), a softbox (again posed shooting) etc. Some of the softest light we can get is the natural softbox effect of the middle of the day overcast cloud. Light becomes extremely soft and even, because the light from the sun is passing through an interface (cloud) before it strikes the Earth’s surface. Another easy given is window light, even better if have a thin blind / diffuser that can be placed over it for more control. Pop a subject there on an overcast day and try some compositions. Try them front lit, and fill their face and eyes with soft, even light. Then try them side lit. Get some shadows on one side of their face. Don’t be too rigid whilst learning. You don’t need to know the names of the light styles you are shooting, like Rembrandt. You just have to do what looks good at this stage. I highly recommend studying old paintings. ‘The Blue Boy’ for one. Look at the 18th Century Gainsborough paintings. Check out the feeling created in Constable’s paintings. Look at the world he creates from a picture. Watch the Stanley Kubrick film ‘Barry Lyndon’ for more inspiration. Look at the famous Renaissance Portraits. For me, I have always been fascinated by iconic paintings. Choose your inspiration, because everyone has a place that made them grow from.
Little Girl at Wedding. D800, 85mm f/1.4D Prime lens - Shot with window light on an overcast day
Quantity of light is something that available light shooters can do little with. We have to work with what we have at the scene. There are some ways however. Due to the inverse square law, light falls of extremely fast from a light source. So if you are shooting a subject by window light, or even candle light, move them closer to the light to gain more intensity. This also increases quality too, as the lightsource becomes effectively larger relative to the subject. When a light source get’s larger in this way, it always gets softer and we get better quality light on our subject as a result. Test this. Get your phone out and go into the bathroom with the torch on but the lights out. Put the torch on your face, ultra close to the side of your eye / cheek/ Notice how soft and beautiful the light appears? Now move it away, as far as possible from your face, at arms length. Notice how nasty the light just became? It’s beacuse it got effectively a lot smaller relative to your face. The light went from a soft light source, to a hard light source. This is why, when we see people shoot professional scenes, they use huge softboxes and umbrellas, and they are super close to the subject’s face being photographed, often just off camera and out of shot.
Direction of light is something that we can also control near windows to a degree. For example, by very simply pulling curtains together a little, we can leave them open in areas that create soft yet directional light. Outdoors we can have some control of the direction of light by observing the angle of the sun relative to our subject. We can position them, and shoot at a time of day that produces better light. We can also, mix available light with some flash if feeling adventurous. Trial placing the sun behind a subject to start. The try from the side, then from the front. At this point, form opinions about what looks best, and what works for your shooting style. Indoors, in lowered available light, the obvious direction of light comes from the arteficial lights themselves. The lamps, ceiling lights, and other lightsources that interact with our subject. We need to look at these and wait / position our subject near to them in an optimal way to achieve an interesting picture.
Portrait of a Boy. Nikon D700, 85mm f/1.4D Prime lens - Using window light as a rim light to create light and shadow
Settings
So how do we approach settings in available light, in particular low? Well, this comes from learning about the camera’s inbuilt light meter. All camera light meters measure the reflected light from a scene into our lens at in instant in time. This allows the photographer, (or in auto mode, the camera) to make a correct exposure of the scene. However, how do we actually do that? What are the actual mechanics at play? Let’s look at an example first.
Arcade Boy - Nikon D810 with 24mm f/1.4G lens
I watched my son for quite some time delicately placing his 10p coins into the slots in this arcade machine. I have the benefit that with Nikon cameras and their top screens, I can see what the meter is reading at all times. (tip: menu, and extend the meter off delay - this will allow you to decide exposure before you even bring the camera to your eye). With the D810 and my 24mm lens in lower light, I will often be in manual mode for pictures such as these. I will also be at the widest aperture to gather the most light. I will also be here to get the best separation as you can see here in the final shot. Next, I will be considering my shutter speed based on the movement at the scene and how sure I am of my abilities. I know that I can hand hold a 24mm lens down to 1/15 and get pixel level sharpness. However, there is no way that my son was that motionless. Therefore, I went up to 1/80 and waited until he was positioned correctly in the frame, and paused any eratic motion as to take the picture. The camera meter will have a central point on the display in camera of where it thinks is ideal exposure. This is where I look to the ISO to correctly expose the scene. We have so far, an aperture of f/1.4, and a shutter speed of 1/80. This defineds how much light we collect. ISO is a digital signal boost which brightens the scene to that it looks correct to our eyes and makes a good picture. In this particular case, light was so plentiful that base ISO 64 let the meter see ideal exposure with f/1.4, 1/80. In lower light, you will have to boost ISO to achieve a properly exposed image. If you can, opening aperture or lowering the shutter are the two parameters that actually increase the light collection the sensor will see. Remember that ISO is a digital boost within the camera after the fact. However, we do need to use ISO to do this, so that we don’t involke more noise, or colour casts from bringing up overly dark images at the scene in post processing. If you approach low light scenes like this and the camera lets you see ideal exposure with 1/80-1/100 shutter speed at base ISO, you just won a watch. If the meter tells you that you can have 1/50 shutter speed, but you need to be at ISO 1600, obviously you are in much lower light. You can either add light with flash, get closer, or open up the aperture of the lens wider. If you are at the maximum aperture, you can also drop the shutter, but then you have to contend with scene movement, and the steadiness of your own hands.
The Laughing Bride - Nikon D810, 85mm f/1.4D. Low light quantities, but decent quality and direction allow for a shot in available light.
We need to be careful of illogical settings when shooting in manual mode. Here are some for this scene:
ISO 1600, 1/8000, f/1.4.
These make absolutely zero sense. Why would I shoot at ISO 1600 when I have a shutter speed of 1/8000? Unless we are shooting greyhounds in a dark room moving at vast speed, we do not need such a high shutter speed. If the meter suggests this is a good exposure, then we can simply modify this to logical settings, thus ISO 64, 1/500, f/1.4. We just made our picture have much higher quality because we could use base ISO - where all the best quality exists. Now we can’t always do this. Let’s look at more illogical settings that I see all the time when people shoot in low light:
ISO 6400, 1/100, f/4
These settings make little sense to me. Why are we maxing out our ISO (where noise is going to be a problem, and colour is going to be poorer) when we are at f/4? If we are shooting with an f/2 or even better, and f/1.4 prime lens, we can drop this to something much more logical. We can be at ISO 800 if we have an f/1.4 lens! This would give the following: ISO 800, 1/100, f/1,4.
Remember, light collection is garnered via aperture and shutter speed. ISO is a digital gain applied after the fact, within the camera’s electronics and software. Photography is light. Let your sensor be bathed in it; do not starve it of light with less than optimal settings. However, also, do not get so caught up in settings that you miss a picture. Learn and understand exposure so intuitively that you do not even have to put much thought into it when shooting,..then you will be free to think about composition and timing.
Glow Stick Girl. Nikon D810, 50mm f/1.4G
Next let’s look at an image which is absolutely pushing the limits of available light shooting. ISO 12800, f/1.4 and 1/40 were my settings for this one. I knew that I could hand hold a 50mm lens to less than 1/40, however I had to think about the kid’s motion too, hence I settled on 1/40. Timed right, I’d get a sharp shot, as I have done here. ISO 12800 was easily decided on because the only light was the glow stick in the dark room. So I selected the maximum ISO of the D810. The aperture was another easy decision. We want that wide open in low light for something like this, so I had it set to f/1.4 from the get-go. To touch on what I said earlier; notice how soft the light is on her face here? It’s a tiny light source - the only thing lighting her is the light from this tiny glow stick. However, because it is close to her face, it becomes very soft.
In this sort of light, the meter is always going to tell me that I am badly underexposed. The light meter in my D810 is trying to effectively expose for 18% grey. Thus it sees this sort of scene as underexposed. In these conditions we simply must extract every photon of light that we can from the scene. That’s where full frame cameras like the Nikon D810 come in, with fast aperture prime lenses.
Technique
When we are shooting in lowered light, we want to try to wait until subjects have the least motion, and photograph them at that point. It becomes a watching and waiting game. I do this because, it allows me to use a much slower shutter speed, and get more light onto my camera sensor. There might be the odd time I mis-judge this and I have to delete a picture. So be it. Hand holding technique is another big ticket item in this game. We can practice how to properly hold our camera, how to lock our elbows and arms tight to our body to become like a human tripod. We can even on occasion, use walls to lean ourselves against, or infact the actual camera itself pushed against a wall for lateral stability. This can allow you to drop your shutter speed even more. Be careful though, you have to content with subject motion. This effect is magnified by the focal length of the lens and your distance to your subject. I can use much slower shutter speeds with a 24mm lens at slight distance, vs an 85mm lens close up. Any motion will be magnified of both the subject and your wobbly hands. Think of it like looking out of your window on a point in the far distance with high magnification binnoculars. It’s hard to hold them still and focus in the distance. The wobble is easily noticed by the eyes as we look though the lenses.
A very simple Passport Photo of my son by yours truly
Creating Light
I said I would touch on this topic before I wrapped up this article. It’s the subject so many photographers’ fear. Flash Photography. The subject that makes so many state themselves as ‘available light’ photographers. Do not be afraid of flash. Even if you use available light more than flash photography as I do; understanding how to use flash will allow you to understand light on a much deeper level and it will always elevate your photography.
This is a very simple shot, and bear in mind that it was made as a passport photo, hence my options of lighting are very limited - as are the expressions they want in these things! I can’t create a nice dramatic shadow on the right side of his face as I would like to (I am surprized I got away with this infact - I decided to push my luck a little and use shallow depth of field too, the guys are the passport office must have just glared over this for a couple of seconds). For this shot I used:
D810 on a tripod
85mm f/1.4D prime
Lightstand with an off camera speedlight through a large white umbrella, camera right, very close to subject
Wireless trigger on camera
For nearly all flash photography we use manual mode on camera. We control the shutter speed, ISO and aperture. This means, for example when shooting a wedding in low light, that the background remains consistent, shot to shot. For this type of posed setup I am showing, I still use manual mode. f/2, ISO 64, 1/250 were my camera settings. These settings are easily explained - base ISO for overall quality, f/2 for some shallow depth of field, and 1/250 as that is the flash sync speed. This means that mostly all of the ambient light at the scene will be overruled by my flash going off, creating a nice even light. I set the flash to 1/4 power and in the very low light I was in, I autofocused on the eye using the AF-assist beam in the D810. I noticed it was a little hot on the skin, so I simply dropped back to 1/8 power on the speedlight. And that was it. In posed setups I always manual everything. At a wedding, I still favour mostly available light, however I am not afraid to bring out a flash when the light is diabolical everywhere I look. When in those situations, I switch the flash to TTL mode (through the lens) which means it calculates the power needed on demand. Most of the time it does a fairly good job of it too.
Closing Thoughts
I hope this gives a general overview of how I approach available light shooting. It is always about catching the esccence of the subject and using light to make an interesting picture. Sometimes we have more control than we realise. It is about harnessing that ability when shooting in true available light to make the light and the scene work for ourselves. Just remember, you aren’t shooting true reportage photography unless you are observing. As soon as you direct a subject, you are influencing the perception. You can make allowances though. Say you want to grab a perfect birthday candle shot of a loved one blowing out candles in a restaurant. Ask for a seat with a good background seperation. Get the subject to sit in a position that allows you direct access to shoot them, and allows a beautiful background fall off because you have given yourself space in the background behind your subject. This will give you a nice depth to work with. There are many examples of things you can do to stack your chances of getting a great picture, without coming across as overbearing By thinking this way, you give yourself more opportunities. Thanks for reading.
Steve
D810, 35mm f/1.4 Sigma Art Prime Lens