Lighting Essentials
Lighting is Essential
6 Lighting Tips
Painters use brushes and canvas, sketch artists use pencils and paper, but what do photographers use? Well, since photography is also an art, we use a very common medium. Photographers use light to create an image the way they see it. If you think about it, photography is the art of chasing and shaping light so the camera will capture a scene perfectly. Here are 6 lighting tips to get your started!
1) Start Small
If you start by balancing multiple light sources at a time, you will instantly get overwhelmed and confused. It’s OK to start small so you can understand lighting concepts and techniques. Start with one light source and be able to produce amazing photographs with it. Then, use your experience to balance two light sources. As you continue to improve over time, so will your lighting and photographs.
2) If in Doubt, Choose Warm
All photographs have temperature. Yellow or orange photos are called warm, and blue photos are called cool. Sometimes it’s difficult to choose between the two. If you’re in doubt as to which will look better, choose warm. Warmer photos almost always look better and get a better response than cool photos.
3) Study Natural Light
When you are on location or shooting in the field with natural light, it’s always important to study and see where light is and where light will be. There are some very valuable apps that will tell you the position of the sun at each hour of the day. Also, ask yourself questions like, “Will I be shooting backlight?” or “Where will the shadows be in this photo?” Asking yourself these questions will help you think through your photos before you take them.
4) Keep Shooting
If you think you got the perfect shot, odds are you didn’t just yet. Actually, you are probably on the brink of getting the perfect shot. Whenever you feel the urge to quit because you shot a photo you’re happy with, take at least 20 more. That way you’ll know that you have explored multiple possibilities, and you won’t have to do a reshoot.
5) Experiment
To continue to improve you lighting techniques, it’s important to push the envelope and experiment with what you have. You may come up with some terrible photos, but keep in mind that you will also take some awesome ones as well!
6) Diversify Your Lighting
That’s basically just a fancy, private school way of saying don’t light everything the same way. If you’re always using the same flash technique over and over, it’s time to move on to something new. Diversify the way your lighting looks! Work on lighting intensity, color, angle, mood, etc! You never know what you are going to come up with once you start experimenting.
How to Take Photos in Low Light
Low light situations are the frustration of photographers and have been since the early 1870’s (ok, I made that up, but low lighting is annoying and I wouldn’t doubt it). There are so many issues in low light and many compromises that have to be made. One wrong move and it could cost you an amazing photo.
I, for one, am sick of low light pushing me and my DSLR around! It’s time photographers take the power back!
Slower Shutter
Most of the time, low light situations produce underexposed photographs. Underexposed simply means that the photo is too dark.
One of the ways you can fix a photo if it is underexposed is by using a longer shutter speed. Longer shutter speeds will increase the amount of time the camera is actually taking a photo. The great thing about longer shutter speeds is that the longer a photo is being taken, the more light enters the camera and the brighter the photo will be.
The downside to using slower shutter speeds is that they track motion. For example, if I take a photo of a person running using a fast shutter speed, the camera will freeze them in motion. However, if I take the same photo for 5 seconds, wherever they move within that 5 seconds will show in the photo.
So, while a slower shutter lets in more light, it also runs the risk of showing blurry movements.
Wider Aperture
Just like using longer shutter speeds, using a wider aperture has its upsides and its downsides. We can start with the positive. The great thing about using wider apertures is that they let in more light. If you take an underexposed photo with an aperture of f/14, you can take the same photo with an aperture of f/4.5 and it will be MUCH brighter.
While aperture controls light, it also controls depth of field. If you don’t know what depth of field is, it’s the amount of a photo that will be within focus.
The issue with depth of field really lies in landscape photography in low light. Landscape photos are known for being tack sharp throughout a photo. However, if you use a wider aperture like f/4.5, the amount of the scene in focus will be much different than if you used f/14. Unless you know how to focus stack photo in post-processing software, you will have to make compromises to your photo.
Higher ISO
The last creative exposure tool you can use to increase light in low light situations is to use a higher ISO. I like to think of the ISO as the peacemaker. He always seems to balance things out. However, just like everyone else, the ISO has issues of his own.
The simple question is, will a higher ISO, such as 1600, make a photo brighter than if we used a lower ISO, such as 400? The answer is an emphatic yes!
But, there is a drawback. The higher you go with the ISO, the more noise there will be in a photo. Noise looks like tiny dust particles all over your photo. You can fix noise in editing software like Lightroom , but you also run the risk of reduce detail in other parts of the photograph as well.
So, the moral of the ISO story is to use it cautiously.
(I feel like balancing aperture, shutter, and ISO is a never ending telenovela episode…)
Candle light is great but difficult to balance
Look for Available Light
Don’t run from low light. Embrace it (wow, that was deep… you should cross stitch that and frame it on your wall). But seriously, available light in low light situations usually produces the most memorable photographs.
Examples of available light include Christmas lights, candles, fire, street lights, or anything else that will gently cast a warm glow on the subject of your photo. For example, if I’m taking photos in another country at night, I might try to capture the essence of that culture by watching for facial expressions close to candles. Photos like that are always more interesting.
How to Fix Underexposed and Overexposed Photos
Fixing Overexposed Photos
Overexposed means that a photo is too bright. A great way to find out if parts of your photos are overexposed is to use the flashing highlights in the DSLR playback monitor. The flashing highlights option will either be in your playback menu or simply hit the display button while you are reviewing photos until you can see the flashing highlights. The overexposed or completely white parts of the photo will flash.
Fixing overexposed photos in camera is a trial and error process. When you test your first shots in any lighting situation, look at your photos to see if they are overexposed. If they are overexposed, you can fix the exposure many different ways in manual mode.
First, you can reduce the amount of light in the photo by increasing the shutter speed. I always try the shutter speed first because in most situations a faster shutter is not a bad thing.
However, if I need a longer shutter, I will keep my shutter slow and go to my second option. The second option to fixing an overexposed photo in the camera is a smaller aperture. If you are using an f/5.6 you can change to an f/14 and that darken the photo. The smaller the aperture, the darker the photo will get.
If you want to keep your shutter slow and your aperture wide, you need to visit your third option. The last option you have is to reduce the ISO. Say you are taking the photo with an ISO of 800. Reduce the ISO to a 100 or 200 and you will darken the exposure.
Fixing Underexposed Photos
Underexposed means that the photo is too dark. If you get to a location or a shoot and your photo is underexposed, you have three options.
One option is to decrease the shutter speed. Obviously, you can’t always reduce the shutter speed if you need sharp photos because slower shutters show movement.
If you can’t reduce your shutter speed, you need to go to plan B. Plan B is to widen your aperture. Many times a wider aperture is a great option because it lets in more light and creates depth of field.
But, what if you don’t want depth of field? If you can’t reduce the shutter or you don’t want the effects of a wider aperture then you can increase the ISO. However, a wider ISO creates more noise (small dots in a photo that look like you had dust on your lens) within a photograph.
What is the Histogram?
The histogram is a representation of light throughout a photograph. That’s really the most basic definition of a histogram I can provide. A histogram is divided into five light representations: blacks, shadows, mid-tones, highlights, and whites. Each tone is represented by a specific section in the histogram shown below…
A representation of tones in a histogram
As you can see, based on the histogram example above, a histogram can take many shapes and forms. No histogram is exactly the same. The histogram will be different based on the number of pixels that are in each tone in the photograph.
Overexposed
You can also look at a histogram to see if a photograph is overexposed. Remember, overexposed means that the photo is too bright so the highlights and whites in the histogram will be much larger than the blacks, shadows, and mid-tones. This will push the number of pixels per tone to the right of the histogram chart.
Brighter photos push the histogram to the right
Underexposed
Underexposed photos can also be seen in a histogram. Like in overexposed histograms, the histogram for underexposed photos is going to be heavy on one side. Since underexposed photos are darker, the blacks and shadows will have a higher pixel representation than the rest of the histogram. This will push the weight of the histogram to the left.
Darker photos push the histogram to the left
Danger!
Just a quick note on overexposed and underexposed histograms… It’s not necessarily a bad thing if the histogram is pushed to the left or right. The only thing you really need to be aware of is the histogram touching the left or right edge of the chart.
If the histogram is touching the far left of the chart, it means that there are completely black pixels in the photo. If the histogram is touching the right edge of the chart, it means there are completely white pixels in the photo.
When the histogram is touching the far left or right edge of the chart, it means that there is absolutely no color represented in those pixels. Since there is no color represented, you won’t be able to effectively edit those parts of the photo later.
How to Use a Histogram to Your Advantage
Since all you have to review photos in the field is a tiny thumbnail image on your DSLR LCD screen, it’s important to learn to use the histogram to see light in a photo because it’s difficult to see every part of a photo on such a small image. You now know how to tell if a photo is overexposed, underexposed, and how much light is in each part of the histogram based on the number of pixels in the graph.
So, since you know all about the histogram and what each section represents, let’s take a look at how you can use the histogram along with a photo while you’re in the field.
Example a
For this example, the “a” represents the blacks in the photo. Now, for this example I don’t think blacks are a bad thing because I don’t want to alter their color. I like the black silhouettes in this photo.
Example b
Anywhere you see a “b” in the photo represents the b on the histogram. So, there is a spike in the histogram in the shadows section. In the photo every b is located over a section of the photo that is a shadow or darker area.
Example c
The spike in the histogram labeled “c” is halfway between the mid-range and highlights section. This would be any part of the photo that is brighter and almost too bright. As you can see, the letter c is directly over where the sun just disappeared behind the horizon, the brightest area of the photo.
Now you know how to see, inspect, and visualize how a histogram will look, and how to use it effectively while you are in the field or at a shoot! I really hope you can use this information to improve your photography!