Using Your Pink Digital Camera To Capture Better Low Light Photographs
One of the most common questions posed by new and seasoned photographers alike relates to taking better photos in low light situations. It’s a common scenario – you are in a dimly lit room or in an outdoor location at night, you press the shutter button to take a photo and your camera simply refuses to cooperate. The camera hunts for several seconds trying to focus in on something, and once it finally does, the resulting image is either blurred or impossible to recognize. While this issue primarily affects owners of point-and-shoot style cameras, it also can affect those with SLR type cameras. Regardless of the type of camera you own, there are a few simple tips that can help you take better photos in low light situations.
The large majority of people reading this article that already own a point-and-shoot style camera won’t necessarily be interested in making the leap to the DLSR camera. Therefore, the focus of this article will be to offer some simple, cost effective suggestions that will help you to improve your low light photography. Before exploring some of these options, however, it’s important to understand why many cameras suffer when it comes to capturing photos under low light conditions.
Under low light situations, the camera must tell the lens to stay open for a longer period of time so that a sufficient amount of light can be captured to create an image. The problem is that once you allow the lens to remain open for more than a split second, any movements created by your hands or from external sources will affect the finished image, resulting in blurred or shaky images. Now that we have that out of the way, it’s time to discuss some of the options available that will help you to improve your shots.
Perhaps the simplest and most commonly used solution is to invest in a basic quality tripod. A tripod will allow you to hold your camera still during an exposure and will prevent you from moving or shaking the camera with your hands. A decent tripod can be purchased for under $50.00, and there are a bunch of tripods available to fit a variety of different cameras. There are even tripod options that are lighter and more portable; however, these will typically demand a higher price.
Apart from using a tripod to hold the camera still, another option for improving your low light photography is to increase the amount of available light through the use of your camera’s internal flash. Although most point-and-shoot cameras weren’t designed to light up a large room with their flash units, they are capable of providing sufficient light to illuminate the main subject of a photo in most cases. It is worth mentioning that a flash is not the best solution in all cases, and should never be used under very dark conditions. The reason being is that the flash will likely overexpose the main subject in the foreground and will underexpose the background. Small camera flashes in particular are not good at dealing with these extreme circumstances.
Obviously, an upgrade to a larger flash unit or to a DLSR that has the ability to interchange more capable lenses is another option, though this can be a much more expensive route to go. Regardless of the direction you intend to go with your photography, the tools and tips mentioned above will help you to improve your shots under low light conditions.