Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Hong Kong - Low Light Photography

When you are traveling to another city, in another country, you often want to experience the vibrant night life over there as well, especially in a city like Hong Kong. The biggest solution to low light situations is your flash. However it is not always possible to use it. For example when you are doing landscape photography, when you are indoors in big halls. Flash can spoil the artistic effect or just spoil the mood of the photo, can make photographs look flat.

So learn to use angles and natural lighting. If you are shooting someone, try to angle the face so that one side is always brighter than the other side.

If you have a SLR, make use of the settings, increase your ISO. Increasing the ISO will make the photos grainy, however. You can use noise reduction software afterwards to reduce the graininess in your photos. Or just use the noise as part of the photo to create the mood.

Another good way to shoot in low light is to use a fast lens. I have bought this canon F1.8 50mm for less than $200. It is a cheap and good solution for low light situations. Anyway, the best is to have a tripod with you, but in case you are not carrying one, you can still shoot nice photographs even in low light.