Producing great photos in low light situations

When at a concert, party, club or other night activity, the available light is usually colorful but low enough for your camera to automatically pop up the flash. However, when using the flash, all the atmosphere that the ambient light creates at the event is immediately lost. The only way to capture the party scene and ambiance is to adjust the camera settings accordingly. As this may be difficult on compact cameras, this article is aimed at photographers with a SLR camera or a compact camera with a manual mode. For those who only have presets on the camera I suggest using the “night mode” setting and disabling the flash.

If you are in a low lit situation and you want to capture the mood you will need to get the maximum amount of light onto your sensor in the longest possible time that you can hold the camera still without a tripod. I doubt you will be carrying a tripod with you when watching your favorite band in a crowd of thousands! This depends on various factors including how steady you can hold the camera.


A washed out photo with flash		A much more colourful photo using the recommended settings

Here is how I generally operate. I set my camera ISO to a very high sensitivity setting, such as 800, 1600 or even 3200- this will result in the photo being “grainy” but its well worth the result. Next I set the aperture (the opening of the diaphragm) to the biggest possible setting, therefore the smallest possible f-stop number (depending on the lens). Finally you will need to find a shutter speed that you can hold without any camera shake. I find that an 80th of a second is the lowest I can go before experiencing camera shake. With these settings you will no longer need to use a flash, and thus creating a totally different feel to the photo. These settings will be different for everyone, so best is to experiment. The result will be a photo that captures the event, rather than a photo that freezes a moment with a harsh, bright light.