• Written by Haneen Kanaan
• Posted on:Dec 14, 2017
• (03)No comments

Tips to do low light photography without the tripod

In low light photography, the tripod is a very important factor as you need your camera in a stable form. As I discussed in the previous article (5 reasons to use a tripod) many people believe that you can’t get good results without tripod which is somehow true, but that’s only for very slow shutter photography like trying to take a picture of Milky Way etc. However, sometimes we don’t carry the tripod everywhere due to its weight, as it takes time to set up etc. So, I will give you few tips to get a good picture without using the tripod. 

Use Support

This is my most favorite solution that if you don’t want to use a tripod or you don’t have it, then you can use any wall or your backpack bag to give support to the camera. so, it stays in stable form. The stability is very important in the slow shutter photography in order to reduce the motion blur issues from a picture.

Low Aperture

In many cases, you don’t need to increase the aperture to f/22 or f/8 to get a full sharped picture. Sometimes you need to think little creative before taking a picture like if you want to show only a specific thing, then you don’t need to increase the aperture so high. And when we reduce the aperture it increases the light in the picture. So, give it a try maybe you get much better results.

Increase ISO

The best option to reduce the darkness in a picture is to increases the ISO. ISO basically increase the light in a picture. Due to which you can easily get the required result but by increasing too much ISO can also ruin the picture by adding the noise and grains.

RAW Format

For low light photography, I prefer to take pictures in RAW format rather than JPEG as then you can add more brightness to it through editing. But in JPEG you can edit at a certain limit after that the picture will be pixelated or give grains. That’s why many famous photographers also prefer to take the pictures in RAW format, whether it’s the daytime shoot or night (low light) photography.

Reduce Shutter Speed

When we reduce the shutter speed it increases the brightness of the picture. After reducing the shutter speed you can take the pictures in burst mode by which the camera will take few clicks within a second and you can get a full focused picture. But if your shutter speed is very low then you need to give the camera a proper support.

Use Flashlight

If other technique doesn’t work out, then use the flashlight on the subject to get the required results. There are many types of flashlights available. You can use speed lights, built-in camera flash or strobes, etc. You can also adjust the amount of light in flash as well in order to get a more appealing picture.

Through such tips, you can do the low light photography without using the tripod. However, I would recommend if you have or can bring the tripod for low light photography, then it would be easy and might get much better results. There are many other options as well, All you need to do is to explore some creative ways to do low light photography without using the tripod and keep sharing it with others. 

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