(upbeat music)
- What's up everybody, Peter McKinnon here.
Welcome to Toronto.
Today we're talk about low light photography.
I know it doesn't really look low light right now,
it's because it's the middle of the day it is like 11:30.
I just need to find out where to pay for parking.
(upbeat music)
(engine starting)
Had to park like 100 miles away
because the underground was too low for this truck.
(upbeat music)
we're here at my friend Jon Simo's studio
which is called Neon Demon.
You may have seen it in vlogs before.
This guys found like every possible neon sign know to man.
I'm pretty sure every sign that has ever existed
that's neon is in his studio.
So, let's go check it out,
and talk about low light photography.
This is a fun building.
- Here he is! - Hello!
- Whoa, dude look at the color that comes outta that room.
(suspenseful upbeat music)
Look at the first thing he asks me is,
if I want a coffee, yes.
Dude, yes.
Having great time.
Let's get down to the brass tax of things.
When you are take low light photography,
when you're taking pictures in low light settings,
the biggest thing people are always running into is
either the photos are too noisy or they're blurry
because everything's moving to fast
and you shutter speeds not fast enough
to keep up with the movement.
Those are usually the biggest culprits
of having difficulty shooting something in low light.
Like I just said, shutter speeds gonna be one of the things
you wanna keep in mind all the time.
When you're shooting in low light
try to always double your focal length.
If you're shooting with a 50 mil try to make sure
your shutter speeds at least at 100 millimeters,
that's gonna at least give you relatively decent speed
to keep up with what's happening in a scene.
A lot of people will say, my kids are in doors,
it's at night they're running around,
or my pets are running around, I try to take a photo,
and then they're half blurry,
because they're moving through the scene.
You have dog running through the frame,
and you snap that photo, but the dogs moving faster
than your shutter speeds able to open and close.
If you are in a low light situation and you're saying,
but Pete, I put my shutters speed to like one over 20,
like 125th of a second, and then everything's too dark.
That's when you have to compensate by adding
that fake light if you will,
the ISO to compensate by bumping that ISO up higher,
which lets you in turn make that shutter speed faster.
So, it's gonna capture photo faster in low light situations
by bumping up that ISO,
but keep in mind the higher you bump up that ISO
the more grainy it's gonna get,
the more noisy you're gonna introduce into your photos.
That brings up point number two,
you're shooting in low light, and you have shutter speed,
and that sweet spot, your ISO set to
maybe 3,200, whatever, maybe even higher 6,400.
You get those photos back in the light room
and you think, it's little bit grainy.
You can go down to the luminance adjustment
and that's on the right side, right here, I'll show you.
If you move that luminance over a little bit to the right,
it's gonna start to smooth out that photo.
Don't go to far, though.
If you go to far with that luminance
you'll just look like a plastic balloon.
You'll just look like a balloon animal,
everything will look terrible.
Make sure you're in that nice sweet spot,
because sometimes a little bit of noisy,
a little bit of grain actually looks good in photo.
There's a lot of time I'll add grain to something
to give it a more stylized texture.
You guys hear me say texture all the time.
So, that would be point number two,
is make sure that you use your luminance adjustments
within light room to compensate for
those noisy low light photos.
So, you've got shutter speed,
making sure we're at the proper shutter speed,
and we got the ISO,
making sure we're bumped at the right ISO,
and using luminance within light room.
Jon just brought up a good point,
when we're talking about shooting raw.
You want to make sure that you're shooting raw
especially in low light situations,
because you can really bring a lot back and out of
a raw photo oppose to shooting something like JPEG.
So, it's great to know the limitations of your camera
and how far you can push a raw photo.
Because, something that's shot in camera
that's looks a little but to low or under exposed,
you would be very surprised as to how far you can bring
that raw photo when you are shooting in post after the fact.
A shot that might look like this,
can then look like that when you're finished.
And, that's all just moving the data
that's stored inside raw photo,
and it's not actually damaging the photo in the process.
If you're shooting something like JPEG
you're not gonna be able to have that flexibility
without damaging the file and killing the high res that
you paid for with the camera that you're using right now.
Another tip with shooting in low light,
is you're gonna make sure you're shooting wide open aperture
as wide open as you can make that lens go.
Letting in the most amount of light,
which let's you shoot at higher shutter speed.
All of this stuff kind of circles back to camera basics
that we talked about, I'll link it up there.
But, those are very important aspects,
because if your shoot at five, six, or F8,
that lens, that opening is so small
letting in such little amounts of light,
that you're not actually being able to capture anything.
So, you wanna make sure that
you're opening that up nice and wide.
Now, lens that have faster apertures, that are wider,
they're gonna be more expensive,
so that a little bit of a trade off.
But, you use all of these things together
to compensate for the lack of light.
Shutter speed, the aperture, the ISO,
and trusting your raw files.
I wanna give you guys a quick tour of this
Neon Demons Studio, it's so awesome.
Jon's put so much work into a bunch of different scenes
and signs, and restoring things,
and making it just sick place to shoot.
So, full disclosure, I have been here for nearly two hours
and done nothing but like marveled at this stuff, so.
Now, it's time to crunch this entire video
into the next 20 minutes.
But, this is the TV scene,
all of these TV's turn on and off,
and display all this cool static,
which looks super cool and super stylized.
And then, above it you got a neon sign here,
that's corner number one.
Number two, this corner here, the drug sign,
the drug sign is popular favorite amongst lots of
Instagramer's and people that come shoot here.
It's that neon blue dope squad sign color,
which obviously I'm a little bit partial to.
Also, it's important to note there is a perfectly placed
whole in the chain, which we would refer to as
the Instagram chain link whole, because you guys know
Instagramer's love shooting through chain link wholes.
Attention to detail.
This is one of my favorite signs,
this sign says, this is Chinese, and I love that,
I just think that's really, really funny.
This Corner here is like the bathroom of
like a subway stop after you watched a film
and the dude just killed someone and he's running
into the corner to wash the blood off his hands,
and he's looking at himself in the mirror,
contemplating the choices he's made.
That's happening in the corner right here.
Here's a closer look at this corner
and then if you just move forward you get that nice,
there's just so many colors.
The phone booth, super dope.
I fit in it too, like I fit perfectly in this phone booth.
Hello.
If I bring you in here with me and close the door.
Will you pass me that Aerosol?
I put this in a vlog, maybe two years ago now.
This is the stuff I showed you
when we were like doing some urban exploration
and we used this to smoke up the,
ooh, moody, right, come on, like that, super cool.
Now, I gotta figure out how to get out of here.
(coughing)
I love how colorful this vlog is gonna be.
This is the lucky sign and one of my personal favorites.
It's just really nice, it's just yellow, just crisp.
So, that the other side of the phone booth.
California sign.
Still trying to figure out where this came from,
apparently it was commissioned for a movie.
Jon's trying to figure out what movie it was for,
which kinda makes it a little mysterious, really like that.
On this side, you have that fake glass wall that
you can spray to make it look like it's raining outside.
Again, attention to detail.
It's those little clever things that
make great photos and great videos.
Area 51 straight up, get nothing done, stand in this corner,
and play old school videos game all day, all day.
(playful music)
So, if you ever come shoot here,
plan for at least half an hour doing this.
Rack of sun glasses.
Great touch, put these on get super awesome photos,
and like this, like you just saw.
So, that's a fun little touch there.
- [Peter] Remember that, what is this thing?
- So, this is my master control unit,
I have almost every sign in here
rigged up to smart switches.
- [Peter] I don't even have my house rigged like this.
- So, I can do this.
And, it'll turn off.
- [Peter] Whoa.
Oh, so, you can really like change the lighting
like if you want it to all be like nice and blue.
Then you can just.
- Or if you just go like, boom.
- [Peter] Oh, that's sick.
- Hey, Siri turn on Area 51.
- [Siri] Done.
- [Peter] Everyone's playing Fortnite, but here we go.
You've tried to set this space up,
so this it tells a story
with different neon signs and things like that.
- The best part about neon is that it tells a story,
it's the only source of light that does that.
And, finding neon on the street that does
just that is really difficult.
I wanted to make space people would come in,
and experiment, and play, and have fun.
- Man, this is the best.
Look at this.
Thank you to Jon for letting me actually shoot here.
And, do wanna plug just for two seconds?
Just cause we gotta a lot plug.
- If you live in Toronto or you're just visiting
I'd love for you to come by and see the studio.
Just hit me up on Instagram, Neondemonstudio.
- [Peter] Sick.
And, you're always adding to this spot too right?
- Yeah, like a new a sign every couple weeks.
- [Peter] Oh my goodness, it's so sick.
Dude, thank you so much for having us.
It's been a blast, thanks for the coffee,
and we'll see you next time, goodbye.
Wow, that was as cool as I thought it would be.
I mean, I love my dope squad sign,
but being a room filled with that many signs.
There's honestly there's too much to shoot.
We only had like two hours set for this,
I could have easily taken like the entire day in there
and just kept shooting, so.
Jon, thank you again man.
That was awesome.
More low light photography tips coming atcha.
You know, when I think a tip for low light photography,
that I was just casually give someone would be
don't be afraid to use the settings that your camera offers.
Technology these days is so good.
Even back 15 years ago when we were shooting with Rebel XT's
and you'd push 800 ISO in low light situations
and it would like you were shooting with sand on your lens.
It's like a beach.
But now, you can shoot 6,400 and up, and it looks so good,
so don't be afraid to bump those settings.
That's what you're paying for is the quality of that sensor
being able to shoot in such low light conditions.
Don't not use it because you're afraid
that it might be grainy.
It's 2018, cameras are meant to do this now.
I would say, that's kinda like causally tip that
I would kind of just through out there,
just toss it out there.
It's just use your equipment,
push it, get what you paid for.
(soft electronic music)
- Started thinking about pulled pork on the way home,
stopping for pulled pork.
They make the best sandwich.
I think another important point when we're talking about
using cameras in low light is specifically photography.
Low light is gonna be a lot less forgiving when
you're shooting a video, it's a lot hard to mask that.
Low light video when it get pixelated,
it starts getting grainy and noisy, is a lot harder to fix.
And, just a lot harder to get to look like quality
than when you're shooting photos.
You can sometimes, like I said early,
low light, and grain actually look good in photos sometimes,
and it's a lot easier to clean up using light room.
I know this video is title low light photography
and a lot of these principles sometimes also apply to video,
but it is a lot easier to push your gear
and your equipment when you are doing photos versus videos.
I'm gonna order a pulled pork sandwich
and I think that's a smart choice.
So pumped.
Not bad, right.
Not bad at all.
Thanks for watching.
Hit the like button if you like this video.
Smash it, if that's something that you're into.
2018 style subscribe if you aren't already.
And, I will see you guys in the next video.
I need more neon, goodbye.
(suspenseful upbeat music)