Whether you’re using a mobile phone, a compact digital camera, or an expensive SLR camera, you’ll get much better photos if you learn more about lighting and your camera.
Flash photography often gives unsightly results. Faded, flat and fake faces with monstrous makeup can ruin your memories of a special event. Everything else is so dark that it is not necessary. Here’s how to make gorgeous portraits and photos with natural images in low or ultra-low light conditions.
Although they are designed for digital cameras, many older cameras can also use these tips.
The overall strategy is to monitor or compensate for poor lighting and use simple built-in controls on your camera. As with any new tool, practice, practice, practice – that’s the key to making them work the way you want them to work.
For light, you can consciously adjust the camera to blink or not. Learn how to turn off the flash and use natural light for best results. The default icons are lightning (the flash always triggers) and lightning crossed by a stripe (never blinking). Take one picture with a flash and then one without a flash, and you will immediately see a huge difference.
Modern flashes try to compensate for the distance, but too close – too close, and too far – too far.
For this item, you can skip the “eye” icon (the flash is triggered several times quickly to reduce the object’s pupils, eliminating the “red eyes” then triggering again to create the image). Avoid setting up an “auto” that automatically determines whether a flash is triggered or not, depending on the light available. There are other settings (the moon and asterisk icon can be a quick and convenient “night” setting – try).
First, take a guide to your camera. For many people, it’s much easier to have an electronic copy with the ability to search (click the “binoculars” icon) on the hard drive than to find and flick through the printed manual. Many cameras these days don’t even come with a printed manual; it’s on CD.
Some cameras have built-in detailed help screens for common features. Many of them have screens with a wide range of valuable automatic settings. Check yours.
Check out some of the settings that depend on the model. Experiment and check before you need these settings to find out what your camera is capable of and how to do it. Most of the settings you find you may not notice – they are designed for something else. Set the camera clock while you’re on it and all your photos will have a time mark.
Changing the ISO or ASA speed setting from “auto” to larger makes the camera more light-sensitive. If you look at the inside information about the photos you’ve taken, it probably includes the “light sensitivity” used by the camera. 100 and 200 are common. Smaller values mean that there is so much light that you can afford to shed it a little to produce saturated, deep colors and prevent blurring. If you manually increase the speed to 1600, it means that you use every element of the skinny light to the fullest. You will sacrifice color and depth, but your photos will not be blurred black shadows. Don’t forget to turn on Auto again when you’re done, otherwise your next photos will be too bright. Some cameras return to “automatic” mode when the camera is turned off. Try yours. Movie users can buy a high-speed roll of film if you know you need it for low light.
Set the camera on a stationary object. A chair, a table, a wall – everything to reduce the blurring caused by the movements of the camera.
You can choose the exposure and aperture on the best cameras and all SLR. Long apertures (1/8 seconds, one-eighth of a second, 125 milliseconds) pass much more light, but they are easy to scramble. Short intervals (1/100 seconds) cease to blur, but require much more light. You can choose the aperture (lens aperture size) to control the light, as well as control the “depth of field” or focus range.
So if you take 1/8 seconds on f-1.4, you can make the most of the available light, but it will be blurry and out of focus if you don’t really work with it. These results are much easier to achieve with the camera than with the help of software. Again, practice leads to perfection.
If you have an image stabilisation feature, this may or may not trigger a flash. Check your own to see if you can turn it on without flash, still getting some stabilization.
Notice the lights and lamps available in the room. You can significantly improve the lighting of your object’s face by sliding it several feet to the side. When the light falls directly above their heads, the deep shadows on their eyes look strange – pull them back a little for a natural look.
Find color balance settings. If you set up the images incorrectly, the incandescent images will be too red or orange, the fluorescent lamps will become completely green or blue. As the simplest solution, simply look at the display screen to match the colors in the room, scrolling through the color settings, finding the best and pressing the shutter button. Street lighting, stage lighting, neon lights and other strange lighting will work much better if you just choose the best decor available.
Buy a small 5-inch tripod for about $5 on eBay and other stores. Set the recording (video speed, color balance, zoom, etc.), place the camera on a tripod on the table, start a 10-second timer (there’s almost all cameras) and leave the camera photo, press the shutter button so you can eliminate the camera’s tremor. Explain to the participants how the camera warns them just before taking a photo. Some people like the monopod, a full-size folding tripod that doesn’t have two legs to make it easy to shoot manually in low light.
If your camera has a zoom, here’s a trick you can use. Use the flash hard, but move away from the object. Increase the scale so that the faces fill the frame. You can get a lot less flash, but essentially the same image.
The flash runs from a minimum distance of 1.5 to 3 meters, so you get completely different results just a few meters back. It also means that the use of a flash on objects more than 3 meters away will cause the camera to shift. If you’re taking pictures sitting in the fourth row of the audience, turn off the flash for best results because the flash still doesn’t work (except for the strong overexposing of the person’s nape in front of you) and take a picture. The camera thinks there’s a lot more light on the object than it actually is.
Keep the camera at the face level of the subject. The distortion of the sound occurs when you stand while the subject sits. It actually makes them fat. Many people hate being photographed because they always look fat (because they always sit down). Get on your knees to take these pictures. Your photos will usually be much more interesting if you zoom in or zoom in to fill the frame with your faces, unless the background is important. People like to see faces, not toes.
If you have a SLR camera, you may have an external flash with a swivel head. Direct the flash at a 45-degree angle so that it is directed to the ceiling, halfway between you and your object. This is called a “reflected flash” and gives a smoother and more pleasant overall effect. You can also experiment with diffusers, fabrics, handkerchiefs and other objects that close the flash to reduce power and miss more natural light. The sensor in the lens can compensate for the weak light, or the sensor may be on the flash – don’t close it. Check with your guide.
A few final tips. Make your photos more valuable by adding or eliminating background and surroundings by zooming in, changing your position, or moving an object. Take some photos. we will always look better than others. Let people know when they smile to make them look better. Don’t make people wait (forever) while you take a picture, otherwise they won’t smile and let you take a picture.
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