We Don't Need No Stinkin' Flash Low light photography without flash

1. We Don’t Need
No Stinkin’ Flash
Lesson 2b George Brown College
“Night and Low Light Photography”
instructor Paul Till

2. Why not!?!
• Flash looks like flash-not what you see
already there.
• People notice flash-especially if they
can’t see for a bit after you take photo.
• Wait for it…the inverse square law.

3. It doesn’t look like flash

4. How do I live without flash?
• Fast lenses, large apertures (focus
carefully on just one thing)
• High ISO (and high noise)
• Slowest usable shutter speed.(VR
[vibration reduction] helps and a tripod
cures-but not if there’s subject motion)

5. The Trade Offs
• You can trade aperture, shutter speed and
ISO for each other.
• Wide apertures. less depth of field(only one
thing in focus, better focus carefully!), lens is
less sharp.
• High ISO. More noise, degraded sharpness
and quality.
• Slow shutter speeds. Unsharpness due to
camera shake and subject motion.

6. The Trade Offs
• You (or on auto, the camera) will try to
pick the best combination of shutter
speed, aperture and ISO.
• e.g. f2 at a 1/60 at ISO 1600 or
f2.8(don’t have to focus quite as well) at
1/30(might not hold camera steady
enough) or f 2.8 at 1/60 at ISO
3200(more noise)

7. Fast lenses,
• Focus carefully on the place that you most want in
focus.
• If the camera isn’t focusing make sure that the
focus point has something with contrast to focus
on.
• If you need to recompose hold the focus lock
button.
• Push the shutter release before subject moves
from were you’ve focused.
• Focus on a point where you hope the subject will
soon be (zone focusing).

8. More-Fast Lenses
• Test the focus when using fast lenses, to to
make sure you’re focusing well
• For a small distant subject, make sure you
are focussing on it and not behind it.
• If there is enough light stop down a little to get
a little more sharpness

9. Lens Sharpness-an aside
A very rough guide to lens quality at different apertures
• As we stop down (make the aperture smaller)
the depth of field consistently gets larger.
• That means we have a more margin of error
for focusing.
• But as we stop down the lens
quality(sharpness and number of other
qualities) changes less consistently and
differently for different lenses

10. Lens Quality-more
• This is the general pattern as you stop
down

11. My subjective view of f stops
on a 50mm f2 lens (factoring in depth of field and sharpness)
• f2“Be careful! Use it if you have to (better than
unsharp because of camera shake)”
• f2.8 “Better, but still be careful”
• f4 “Much better but still focus carefully”
• 5.6 “That’s pretty darn good”
• f 8 “Oh yeah!”
• f 11 “Too much of a good thing”
• f16 “Only if I need the depth of field”
• f 22 “I need tons of depth of field so I gotta”

12. More Lens Quality
• As a general pattern this is a good guide-wide
open lowest quality, improves for 2 or 3 f
stops levels out for a 2 fstops then decreases
for each of the rest of the f stops but still
stays better than the first two stops.
• The depth of field increases consitently and
proportionally for each smaller f stop.

13. How Low Can You Go?
• Relax, hold the camera steady, breath
out,gently push the shutter release
• The longer the focal length the higher
the shutter speed needed
• Test yourself to get an idea of how low
you can go.

14. Safe shutter speeds for hand holding
(a guideline only)
Focal length Shutter speed DX (little) Shutter speed DX (full frame)
10mm 1/15sec 1/10sec
15mm 1/25sec 1/15sec
20mm 1/30 sec 1/20sec
24mm 1/40sec 1/25sec
28mm 1/50sec 1/30sec
35mm 1/60sec 1/40sec
50mm 1/80sec 1/50sec
85mm 1/125sec 1/80sec
105mm 1/160sec 1/100sec
135mm 1/200sec 1/120sec
200mm 1/300sec 1/200sec
300mm 1/500sec 1/300sec

15. Stopping subject motion
• The closer they are it is the faster they are
• (it’s degrees per second not miles per hour)
• The more at right angle to you the faster
they are
• Moving the camera with the subject
(panning) helps

16. Stopping motion
guidelines only
• 1/10000 will stop streaming water into individual drops
• 1/8000 will stop most any motion
• 1/4000 high enough speed to take pictures while walking/ and freeze
baseballs ie. 90mph
• 1/2000 will stop most motion
• 1/1000 will stop bicyclists and runners
• 1/500 will freeze a person jumping in the air ie. basketball
• 1/250 will stop some motion
• 1/125 will stop most walkers, runners, and cars in the background of a
picture, and will work well with panning
• 1/60th will work well with panning but runners arms and legs will be blurred
• 1/30 can work with panning but runner’s arms and legs will be significantly
blurred

17. Stopping subject motion-a trick
• Wait for them or it to stop or slow down
• Even for a fraction of a second
• If they jump up they have to stop to come down
• Wait for the peak of motion
• Allow for shutter delay
• Practice

18. Going against the grain
(or it sure is noisy here)
• Cameras go up to incredible ISO’s
• The higher the ISO the more noise (just like
film!) (also definition and general quality go
down)
• But some noise is uglier than film grain
• Also affected by sensor model (they’ve gotten
less noisy with time), sensor size (bigger is
better), pixel size(bigger is better), long
exposures (1 second+),and heat

19. Reducing noise after you’ve got it
• Reducing noise- in camera setting (may
only work with jpgs)
• In computer with Photoshop, Lightroom
etc
• A stand alone program or plug in for
Photoshop (e.g. Noise Ninja)

20. Reducing Noise
The Trade offs

21. No Noise Reduction
ISO 3200(inset is whole photo)

22. Auto Noise Reduction
(Noise Ninja)

23. Maximum Noise Reduction
(Noise Ninja)

24. Selective Noise Reduction
Plus selective levels
(Noise Ninja and Photoshop)

25. Learn this trick
• The brain looks for things that make the
scene make sense and mentally highlights
them
• The camera just looks at the tones-it doesn’t
care what they are attached to
• Important picture elements must be
separated by significant tonal differences and
this is called…

26. Separation
• If black hair is as dark as the black sky
behind it you can’t see where the head
ends and the sky starts
• There’s no separation between head
and sky.
• Look for something so the poor
subject’s brains don’t leak out into the
sky

27. For most people it’s mostly about
the hair
• Hair is a light trap
• In the light goes between the hairs and follicles but
yikes! It never comes out.
• In the case of lighting from the front and a dark
background most hair will not show up well. Even
darker blond hair will seem dark. If there are lights
behind or from above it is a different story.

28. What to do about hair
• Look for a light behind the person or for
any piece of lighter background-even if
it is only a few square feet
• Then wait or move yourself (or move
the subject)so the piece of background
gives their hair separation

29. In the digital darkroom
• You can increase seperation if it’s there
• The better the separation the easier it is
to increase it and have it look good
(don’t underexpose)
• If there’s no separation you can put it in
with lots and lots of Photoshop work.

30. Here’s some other
questions to ask yourself
• Look at the light. Where is it brightest?
• Where should you photograph from to make
the best use of the light?
• Try squinting and seeing if your picture
makes sense?
• Take the photo and review it. Does it make
sense if you don’t think about the actual
scene where you are?