Techniques for Dark place

[8169]

What are the basic settings to be done in a digital camera to take photos in dark place, like inside forest, late evening time? this is beacuse when I took photos in this situations I'm getting picture very dark and tints on it.

[Nathan deGargoyle]

You need to get more light into your camera so

Slower shutter speed
Larger aperture
Higher ISO

Slower shutter speed will probably need a tripod and remote / cable release to avoid camera shake.

[xxpinballxx]

definitely a tripod...if you want you can set the self timer if you dont have a shutter release.

[Hugo]

Agree with everything but the high ISO.

In a night photography course I took the instructor actually had us keep the ISO as low as possible, since we were using tripods anyway. It was felt avoiding the additional noise was more important to the quality of the photo. It seemed to work out pretty well, there were a lot of good photos taken with little noise in them. It seemed that the additional time needed at low ISO to capture images didn't add noise like a high ISO would have. The tripod will definitely let you test out different options. And use the self-timer.

You may want to take a flashlight(s) with you into the forest, in order to light up the scene a little bit while you're taking the shots. A guy in the course with me, takes photos at night in abandoned buildings and he brings in light sources for interesting effects and to light the scene, not to full day light or anything like that, but to add to the near dark scene.

[wulf]

High ISO is certainly one to approach with care although, to be fair, I have sometimes found that boosting it up from my standard setting of 200 makes a world of difference between being able to take decent pictures and ending up with a blurry or overly dark mess.

In an "almost no light" situation like a dark forest, you will probably need to use a long shutter speed, even with a high ISO, and there it is probably better to keep the shutter open a few seconds longer instead.

Wulf

[Hugo]

Something I forgot to mention. Wind. Depending on what you're going after, if there are still leaves on the trees where you are, and it's windy, you're going to get motion blur from the foliage, just because of the time involved in capturing an image.

[FrankenPengie]

Your camera is going to play a major factor in ISO. My current Panasonic Lumix is really bad at high ISO, whereas the Canon Powershot that was stolen from me before took great shots in the dark.

/rant

[min_is_3]

Would a fast aperature lens benefit in the scenarios that you mentioned?

[wulf]

A fast lens will allow you to reach a given level of exposure in a faster time - definitely a handy asset to open up more options in low light situations.

Wulf