how to take a picture inside in low light, without flash

This picture was a quick snapshot. I didn’t want to miss the moment. My little boy was reading to his daddy in the morning. It was a story in bed and it was just so sweet. So there was no time to change the lighting. The windows were closed and that’s how they had to stay if I wanted to capture the moment. The overhead tungsten light was on, but that’s okay, that’s normal inside.

My manual settings for this shot:
ISO – 6400 (fortunately my camera has a pretty high ISO range. I can go up to 6400 to help with dark settings. It gets a bit grainy but not too bad.)
aperture – 2.2 (remember it was a darker room at the moment so I was looking to let in light, so I opened my lens up more to let in more light)
shutter speed – 1/160 second (again, wanted to let in as much light as possible, could have maybe even gone a little lower/slower shutter speed since they were sitting still… 1/125 or 1/100 would’ve probably worked)

3 Comments

  1. SaraT on September 6, 2010 at 11:29 am

    Wondering how you got the darker shadows in the corners….did that just happen naturally or is it done in editing….hope that’s not too silly of a question….it’s just something I notice in photos a lot. Very sweet moment you captured.



  2. Cori Derksen on September 7, 2010 at 1:16 pm

    Sara, not a silly question. Great question. I did add a tad of vignette in camera raw but my lens creates a bit of that at the corners (my 50mm 1.2L) I believe. I’ll post an unedited one in another post. Good thought. :)



  3. SaraT on September 7, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    Thank you! Hoping you can go over some editing stuff at the workshop – if there’s time of course.