Good photography is very much about efficient lighting. However, achieving the perfect lighting setup for every shot might not always be possible. Sometimes, you’d need to shoot outdoors at night time with not enough light around. Other times, you may have to carry out a daytime shoot in places where there’s lesser light than the amount you’re comfortable working with.
For a novice photographer, ignoring such issues is quite a common thing. However, shooting in low light isn’t an easy task. Even when you don’t realize the complexity of working with low lighting, you’d drastically fail at shooting when met with such conditions for the first time.
Low light conditions sometimes get so bad that even the most adept photographers avoid dealing with them. Despite all these horrors of low light photography, there’s no way a professional photographer can get away without learning the tricks to manage such a problem.
Novice photographers might not consider learning the tricks to manage things when shooting in low light. Such ignorance can lead you to severe failures at many points once you step inside the professional photography circles. This explains why you need to invest your time and resources towards learning the tips and tricks to shoot well in low lights.
Owning a camera like the Canon 80d will automatically increase your chances of acing shoots in low lights. This Canon camera is a wonder, coming with almost all the features one needs for low light shooting. Other than the powerful lenses, a user-friendly interface, and an easy to hold body.
The Canon 80d houses a 24 MP sensor, 45 points hybrid AF feature, great ISO and exposure ranges, as well as a highly resistant body that you can take along anywhere without fearing much damage. Here are some useful tricks and tips to use when shooting in low lights using this fantastic camera.
Use A Slow Shutter Speed
Expert photographers who are capable of shooting well in low light usually do so with their knowledge of shutter speed set up. Your camera’s shutter speed at any instant has a lot to do with the light and exposure of the photos you take. Shutter speed setup determines the amount of light that can enter the lens for a particular click.
When you set the shutter speed on low, there would be more time for the light to go to the sensors. On the other hand, faster shutters lead to a very lesser amount of light reaching the lens. Thus, shooting in low light requires you to set the shutter speed on low to reflect more light in the picture.
However, slower shutter speed comes with many other risks to the picture’s quality, one of them being motion blur. This explains why you must first learn and practice the rule of shutter speed setup and then try using it to your benefit.
Your Canon 80d can help you work with the shutter speed and learn its best use in several ways. With its user-friendly setup, this camera lets you play with all the shutter-related settings fearlessly. Further thanks to 80d’s long battery life. The camera lets new photographers spend as much time learning the shutter tricks as they want without worrying about the charging issues.
Shoot In RAW Mode
No matter how many strategies you apply, you’d still have to edit the photos taken in low light. Among basic edits like playing with the brightness and exposure settings, you will have to look after several other things. A picture saved in jpg or any other compressed format cannot bear this much editing. For such images, even one round of minor edits leads to blurriness and loss of clarity in the picture.
Thus, no matter how much effort you put into clicking the pictures, you’d end up with either poorly edited or blurred images. Such factors explain why you need to click and save your photos in RAW mode.
This mode allows you to save the picture with almost all the picture data without ruining anything or compressing the picture’s size. Hence, when you sit down to edit, you have a lot of visual data to work on. Thus, you don’t have to fear that the picture would lose its clarity. Good thing if you have the Canon 80d. You can easily set up this camera’s shooting and saving mode as per your needs.
It wouldn’t take you more than a minute to set up your mode to RAW format. Photos saved in RAW mode take up a lot of storage space. The Canon 80d is also no less than a blessing in this regard. This camera comes with excellent memory storage, which lets you shoot as many pictures in the RAW format as you want without running out of storage space too soon.
Use Flash If Needed
Not all low-light pictures need to be shot with a sharp flash. Even when your camera’s in-built flashlight is usually helpful in adding that well-lit element to some pictures, it can’t always come in handy. Sometimes, you’d need to rely on the external light sources or other camera settings to achieve that desired perfection in your pictures.
Experts usually see low-light as their chance to explore the benefits of their camera’s flashlight. There is no reason you shouldn’t do the same. Even when you usually don’t realize this, you can add a lot of creativity to your pictures by using flash under low light in different ways.
You can sometimes use the flashlight in such a way that it keeps your picture from having its motion frozen. On the other hand, you can use a combination of flashlight and external light to create light streaks in your picture, giving it a cool effect. When used with adjusted shutter speed and focal setup, your camera’s in-built flash can also let you capture the sharpest possible images in the lowest possible light.
If you use the Canon 80d for low light shooting, you can easily play with this camera’s in-built flash to create great shots. 80d’s flash is powerful, fast, and sharp, allowing you to use it in as many ways as you want, thus capturing the best possible low light shots.
Take Advantage Of AF Assist
You must agree on how the AF feature in modern cameras has made the life of photographers way easier than before. With AF turned on, your camera does more part of your job on its own, giving your great focal suggestion and adding better focus to your shots. Unfortunately, low light conditions don’t let the AF feature to work at its best.
The camera often fails to focus on the elaborate element and can’t detect them under dimly lit surroundings. It is there that the photographers are advised to tend to the AF assistance mode in their cameras. Now found in almost all the DSLRs, the AF assists feature usually turns on a lamp that lightens up the scene being captured.
This improved light allows the AF sensors to focus better, allowing the photographers to take advantage of them. In some cases, the AF assist feature cannot lighten up the scene as much as you may need. This is where you can use your camera’s other features like the exposure and ISO to your benefit, adding more light to the scene.
Thankfully, the Canon 80d is a complete package for low light photography. You can easily find the AF assist feature in the camera’s menu and can turn it on to shoot low light surroundings in the best possible way.
Opt For A Wide Aperture Setting
Aperture and its settings have the same value for low light photography as that is of shutter speed. Novice photographers usually don’t know anything about aperture and, therefore, never tend to set it up in a manner that benefits them. Your camera’s aperture is like a hole in front of your lens. The extent to which this hole opens decides the amount of light that can reach the lens. When you set the aperture on wide, the lens can capture more light.
Thus, low light shots require you to set the aperture as wide. However, the aperture’s width alone is of no value. Instead, ignoring shutter speed, ISO, and exposure when tending to the aperture may lead to very distorted, over-exposed, or blurry photos.
This is why a novice photographer aiming to ace low light shots needs to understand and work with all these inter-related settings before entering professional circles. Setting up the aperture to an exactly needed width isn’t an easy job. You have to first understand its relation with the focus and other features. Only then can you consider yourself able to work with it well.
A camera as easy to use and handle as the Canon 80d can speed up your learning process in this regard. Sticking to this camera during learning, you can easily understand the basics of exposure and shutter setup. You can later use them to your benefit.
