Shooting in Low Light

(great for concerts like Gwen Stefani's!)

I got this shot 30 feet away from the stage in a dark setting

- Turn off the flash (its useless when you're a long distance away and it tends to blow out your subject)
- Set ISO higher than what your auto mode would give you. Try 800 or more.
- Turn on your self-timer
- Put the camera on a steady surface (a tripod or table).

I just happen to have a Gorillapod, which is this really cool tripod that is extremely easy to carry. I know most of you are thinking, yeah right, who carries a tripod? Well, with the Gorillapod, I just wrap its flexible legs around the long strap of my camera case. It goes everywhere my camera goes and I don’t even notice it's there. It’s great!

But anyway, back to the picture. I needed a steady surface because the camera had a long exposure time when I turned off the flash due to the very dark room. The tripod ensured that the camera stayed perfectly still. So why the self-timer? Using a self-timer ensures that when you take the picture you don’t accidentally move the camera. Just press the shutter and then the camera counts down 10 seconds and takes the shot by itself. The higher ISO just gives the camera more light sensitivity so you can get the shot faster with less blur. You have to experiment with the right setting for this as the higher ISO numbers result in some grain in your photo, as you can see in the one I took.

Solarized with HP Design Gallery in camera effects

In this next picture I solarized the image with the Design Gallery special effects in my camera – more on this in a later blog! I turned this picture into a mousepad and a notebook from Snapfish as a gift to my parents.

I have used the steps above whenever I want to take shots indoors with low light. I find the resulting picture looks 10 times better than if I tried to use the flash. The only caveat is that if your subject is moving a lot and it’s really dark, you can get some blur in the picture. But in the case of my brother on stage, I actually thought a little blur was kind of cool – it gave the picture a gritty feel that was consistent with the setting.

I love taking low light shots – do you have any tips to share?