Here are five top tips for improving your photos in low light situations.

1. Find more light and/or maximize what you have
Photography is all about light. If you find yourself taking photographs in a place where there’s not a lot of light, the first thing to think about is whether there is a way you can get more light onto your subject. Can you move to a lighter part of the room? Can you go outside (provided it’s not night time)? If you can’t move to more light, can you add some extra light or use a reflector to redirect more light onto your subject?

by Baltimike by Baltimike

2. Bring your own light
Most people prefer the look of photographs taken with available light but sometimes there just isn’t enough light available and we have to resort to a flash. Often photos taken with a camera’s built-in flash have a washed out look to the subject and an underexposed background and any ambience created by other lighting gets drowned out by the flash. That said, using a flash is usually better than getting blurry photos so if the rest of these tips are still not working for you, it’s better to use your flash than miss the photo.
If you do decide to use your flash, you might want to make use of these top tips for indoor flash photography and learn about slow sync flash.

3. Turn up the ISO (but not too much)
by brentbat
ISO determines the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor to light. In the days of film you were stuck with the ISO rating of the film in your camera but with digital you can change ISO from one photo to the next so it’s worth knowing what to do with it!
Increasing the ISO makes the camera’s sensor more sensitive to light so for the same shutter speed and aperture, you get more exposure but (like many things) it comes at a price - on most cameras higher ISO introduces noise so there is a balance to be struck.
How far you can go depends on your camera and how much noise you are willing to tolerate. I tend not to go beyond 400 in most situation but many modern cameras will go up to 3200 or higher with variable results! You need to experiment with your own equipment but when you’re shooting in low light, dialling up the ISO may give you the extra exposure that you need particularly in situations where you can’t use a flash such as this gig photographed by brentbat.

4. Use a wide aperture

When light is short you need to make sure you let as much into the camera as you can when the shutter open so set your lens to the maximum aperture you can while still having the full depth of field you need (wider apertures result in shallower depth of field). Remember that wider apertures are denoted by smaller f numbers so f4.0 is a wide aperture and f22 is a small aperture.
If your lens just doesn’t open wide enough, you might want to get hold of a prime lens with a wide maximum aperture. Most DSLR lens manufacturers make relatively cheap 50mm prime lenses (Canon’s and Nikon’s are shown to the right) with a maximum aperture of f1.8 which can take sharp portraits with nice blurred backgrounds and so are great for weddings and parties.

5. Get some stability!
If you’ve pushed your ISO as far as you’re willing to and your lens aperture doesn’t open any wider, the last option you have before adding extra light is to increase your exposure time. When hand-holding a camera you have to have a particularly steady hand to get sharp photos at shutter speeds slower than about 1/30th of a second so if you find you need to work at slower speeds than that, it’s time to put your camera on a tripod or monopod to keep it still. If you don’t want to carry around a full-size tripod, here are some portable tripod alternatives.