A Simple Guide to Help You Learn Your Camera So You Can Enjoy Your Time Outdoors
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Low Light Wildlife & Nature Photography A simple guide to help you learn your camera so you can enjoy your time outdoors T RENT SIZEMORE PHOTOGRAPHY Introduction ABOVE: ISO 500 - ƒ/5.0 - 1/200s In order to understand how to Dark clouds, shadows, and dim lights all make for difficult exposures that expose correctly in low light can push the limits of your camera and lens. There is always a situations, you’ll need to compromise between enough light to freeze the action through shutter understand the three aspects of exposure and how far you can push speed and keeping an ISO with an acceptable level of noise and grain. each one to your camera’s limits. By grasping the concepts of exposure in low lighting or difficult lighting situations, you’ll be able to cameras are great at exposing but gives more preference to what’s get the “correct” exposure for any correctly for most scenes you’ll in the center of the scene. If you scene you may encounter. I say encounter, but when you can have something really bright on the “correct” because nothing is set in manually expose using each of the edges of the scene, center-weighted stone. There may be a technically camera settings, you’ll be able to can be helpful for a better exposure. correct exposure for a given scene, fine-tune the exposure to take but you can creatively expose to get advantage of the different attributes Spot metering only measures a the image you want. When you of the light you see. small area of the scene, usually a understand the effect each setting circle visible in the center of the has on the image, you’ll be able to Metering viewfinder. Ideally, this is the expose more or less to create the metering mode you’ll want to use image you imagined. In the simplest terms, your camera with manual exposure controls. tries to find the correct exposure by The goal of this guide is to get out of The problem with automatic mode averaging things out to a middle aiming for a middle gray is that it’s automatic mode so you’ll be more gray. comfortable adjusting the exposure not always the “correct” exposure. on your own! The standard mode, evaluative You can try to prove this by metering, takes into consideration photographing a pure white and Light the entire scene, finding a similar then a pure black subject that fills scenario built into the camera to the viewfinder. Both photos will end All light will have a direction (front, find the best exposure. up being middle gray (in automatic back, side), intensity (brightness), mode). and quality (hard vs. soft). Modern Center-weighted metering works in a similar way to evaluative, Low Light Wildlife and Nature Photography Page !2 Exposure ABOVE: ISO 1000 - ƒ/5.6 - 1/500s Exposure is made up of three This elk was in a brighter area near the river, so I was shooting at 1/500s components: shutter speed, in order to freeze the action. When he moved up to the darker area of the aperture, and ISO. trees, I just adjusted the ISO up to 1000 to get a brighter exposure with ISO is the easiest to understand, other settings remaining the same. just an adjustment of the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor. The downside of higher sensitivity is higher grain and noise, which is 45 or more. The aperture is a ratio It’s much easier to think of making generally (but not always) of the lens opening diameter to the adjustments to one setting at a considered a downside. lens length. and is typically time. If you change one setting, but expressed as “ƒ/2.8” or similar. want the same exposure, you will Shutter speed is the amount of have to adjust one of the other time the camera shutter is open to Stops settings an equal amount to expose the sensor to light. A longer compensate. Later on in this guide, time means more light, and a Exposure in your camera is you’ll find a chart of equivalent shorter time means less light. This measured in increments called exposures to explain this visually. can range anywhere from 1/8000th stops. Increasing your exposure by of a second to several minutes or one full stop will gather twice as All three components work in longer. much light. It’s difficult to visualize tandem, but you don’t have to what your camera sees as twice as adjust all three at the same time. If Aperture is a physical opening you want to increase or decrease that determines how much light much light because your eyes are constantly adjusting themselves. your exposure, you only need to goes through your lens to the adjust one setting. camera sensor. A wider aperture Most cameras are set up to allow lets more light through, and a 1/3 or 1/2 increments in between The next few pages will go into smaller aperture lets less light full stops. more detail about each of the three through. The counterintuitive part settings, and the changes each will of this setting is that higher Putting it Together make to your final image. aperture numbers equal less light. Lower numbers mean more light. By adjusting any of the three Aperture usually ranges from 1.2 to exposure settings, you can change the amount of light gathered. Low Light Wildlife and Nature Photography Page !3 ISO ABOVE: ISO 400 - ƒ/8.0 - 1/250s ISO is the sensitivity to light of the The left half of this image has artificial noise introduced to show how a camera’s sensor. Regardless of the higher ISO would introduce more noise to the image. This is a dramatic camera brand or model, all ISO example and would likely represent an ISO of 12,800 or higher. sensitivities are the same, so ISO 100 on one camera is the same on any other camera. The lowest ISO is 100 (although more visible, but it’s worth it if it Lightroom and Nik software plugins some cameras offer ISO 50). ISO allows you to continue shooting. can get rid of most, if not all, visible 100 offers the least amount of grain, noise. Then again, most people the best colors, and highest If you have a camera made within won’t even notice a noisy image dynamic range (the range between the last few years, you shouldn’t when it has a much deeper story or lights and darks). ISO 200-800 and hesitate to raise the ISO to whatever emotion behind it. There are those even 1600 are unlikely to show any it needs to be in order to expose that will nitpick every little noticeable loss in quality when correctly with the aperture and technical flaw in an image, and compared to 100, but it’s still best shutter speed you choose. If you there are those that simply enjoy to keep it as low as possible. need a shutter speed of 1/1000th of the subject you’ve captured. I’d a second and can’t open the MUCH rather appeal to the latter of Noise & Grain aperture any wider, you should the two. raise the ISO until you can get The difference between the sensor 1/1000th with a good exposure. Expose to the Right in an iPhone camera and the sensor With that said, the shutter speed in a full DSLR is how much grain only needs to be as high as you need If you are using a high ISO, it’s and noise each increase in ISO will in order to freeze the action (if worth noting that the brighter your introduce. Any modern DSLR that’s what you’re going for). If you image is, the less noise will be should have no problems shooting shoot at 1/1000th when you really visible when compared to a similar up to ISO 1600 without any noise or only need 1/500th of a second, underexposed image with the same grain issues. I often have to use ISO you’ll be doubling the ISO ISO. You’ll want to expose as bright 3200 or even 6400 after the sun unnecessarily. as possible without clipping goes below the horizon. These high Even if you find noise in your highlights to minimize the quality numbers are when noise becomes images, programs like Adobe loss of a high ISO. Low Light Wildlife and Nature Photography Page !4 Shutter Speed ABOVE: ISO 800 - ƒ/8.0 - 1/400s Measured in fractions of a second Even though this was taken in the afternoon, I still shot at ISO 800 to get or full seconds, shutter speed is the a higher shutter speed. I could have even doubled the ISO to 1600 and amount of time the camera’s shutter chosen a shutter speed of 1/800th to freeze the water more. I use an remains open to expose light onto the sensor. More time means more aperture f/8.0 when shooting with a teleconverter on my lens to improve light. Less time means less light. the sharpness reduction that the teleconverter introduces. Focal Length BELOW: ISO 100 - ƒ/16.0 - 1/15s When handholding your camera, a This elk was running through the river and I wanted a shot to show his general rule of thumb for choosing movement. By panning the camera and using a slower shutter speed, I a shutter speed is this: was able to blur the background and the splashing water, while keeping at least his eye relatively sharp.