In this video I'll show you how to get sharp shots in low light when you don't
have your full sized tripod.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching AdoramaTV brought to you by Adorama
the camera store that has got everything for us photographers.
Today you join me back in London outside of Tower bridge
for better low-light photography but I've got a problem
I want to shoot great sharp shots in low light but I don't have a tripod so how
can I get around that problem well there's a few things I can do but let's
just take a general picture first and see how it goes.
Now the scene I'm going to shoot is actually slightly over there, we will come
to the Tower bridge in a little bit,
but let me show you what it looks like if I shoot say f8 at a 100 ISO
in the lighting that I have here and I'm going to zoom in as well
just to really make this that much harder and I shoot the London skyline.
Now I can hear the shutter. I can hear when I take a picture
that shutter is quite slow.
Now I'm lucky the Olympus E-M5 Mark II has brilliant in camera stabilization
and lots of cameras do either; in camera or in the lens that can help, but there
are things you can do to give your camera a fighting chance.
Now the first one is to think about the aperture and the ISO.
You've got to get your shutter speed up for sharp shots.
So do you need to be on a 100 ISO? Does your camera take good pictures say
at 400 ISO, or 800 ISO, or 1600 ISO whatever you need to do in this case,
I can go 400 ISO, but I can also open up the aperture.
The photograph I'm taking at the other side of the river Thames.
I don't need f8. I don't need a big depth of field. It is quite a long way away.
I can get away quite happily with a small depth of field from an f2.8 lens
because depth of field is relative to distance.
So f2.8 that brings my shutter speed nice and high
1/160 second. I can probably manage that handheld even at
80 mm or 40mm on my Micro Four Thirds.
Ok so let's say you don't want to go too high on your ISO,
you don't have a lens that opens really wide. What else can you do?
Well the next thing is, is actually you. You can physically
give yourself a better chance by resting yourself down. Making yourself a tripod.
Here I've got three things in contact with this wall.
I've got my chest and my elbows.
That's three things like a tripod, that makes an enormously more stable shot.
Compared to when I'm standing up and I'm shaking all over the place
and it's much harder to get a stable picture.
So as the light level drops maybe that's not going to work, you've got to come up
with a better solution, and the better solution is on my back; my camera bag.
My camera bag makes a brilliant tripod.
There you go no longer touching the camera, and when you're not touching the camera,
you're not going to get camera shake. Now the trick here is
to switch your camera into self timer mode
now my camera like many has a two second self timer mode
which means when I press the shutter and I frame up my shot
I get two seconds for the camera to stop shaking, everything to steady and for my
picture to be taken. Now if you have a traditional digital SLR you have a
mirror that moves as well you might want to consider doing mirror lock-up
but what about when it gets really dark, or you don't have a camera bag or you don't
want to use a camera bag? A little accessory that I like
to carry around with me,
I always take it whenever we're doing a city breaker or a short break,
is this; my little gorilla tripod. These things, I've had this the years and it's
remarkable how useful this is for wrapping around fences or in this case
is resting on a nice flat surface like this.
So I can prop my camera on the gorillapod,
and now I have a little travel tripod perfect for taking these shots
Put the camera bag away,
and I can keep on shooting.
There are various different gorillapods for various,
size and weights cameras, so make sure you choose one that's suitable for your
camera and your lens combination, but in this case, absolutely perfect.
I'm still going to use the two second self timer just to give myself a little
bit of a fighting chance, but now I can actually
drop my aperture. If I go f22 I can actually get a
two-second exposure and I know what it looks like in the video, it doesn't look
that dark but trust me it's surprisingly dark. Two second self timer means I get a
little bit of motion blur on the water gives it a nice smoothness
but it also means that I get crisp shots as well because of course
the camera is not moving. So there you go there's a bunch of tips. So let me take
those tips out and about. We're going to wander around London as the the Sun
is setting here and see what great pictures we can get
OK let's go shoot it!
Long exposure. The long exposure makes the river lovely, creamy and soft.
Just don't touch the camera,
and do it twice.
Well there you go. There's some great tips for shooting in low light conditions when
you've left your perfect tripods behind, and of course we always know we should
have a tripod but the reality is when you're travelling
that's not always convenient. Now if you want to see more videos from myself and the
other amazing presenters right here on AdoramaTV,
you know what you've got to do, you've got to click on the subscribe button.
I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching!