Reading mode: Light Dark

Tack sharp night/low-light photos?

Go to last post
MinAZ

MinAZ

Veteran Member
Messages
5,496
Solutions
5
Reaction score
2,212
Location
Los Angeles, CA, US
Assuming that money and equipment is no object (within reasonable parameters - Hubble Space Telescope is out), has anyone had any success taking photos in very low light (e.g. candle-lit restaurant, night cityscape, forest in full moonlight, you get the idea...) that are tack-sharp or a very close approximation? Obviously, using artificial light is ruled out. Other than that, I am curious to know exactly how sharp you can make a night photograph given whatever equipment/technique one could reasonably obtain without introducing excessive noise (I am hesitant to specify an exact ISO but if you can see obvious noise in a 100% crop, I'd say that's good enough). Noise reduction software is fine as long as the images remain sharp. Examples would be wonderful!
 
Depending on your subject(s), you could try using a wide aperture (f/2 and wider) lens and contort yourself to get the right angle where the "important stuff" is in the focal plane. Some things that help:
  • A sensor that performs well in low light (FF not strictly necessary but it helps)
  • Vibration reduction if hand held (IBIS or OSS)
  • Focus peaking to confirm visually what's in focus
  • Large memory card because a lot of the shots won't be keepers :)
 
MinAZ said:
Assuming that money and equipment is no object (within reasonable parameters - Hubble Space Telescope is out), has anyone had any success taking photos in very low light (e.g. candle-lit restaurant, night cityscape, forest in full moonlight, you get the idea...) that are tack-sharp or a very close approximation? Obviously, using artificial light is ruled out. Other than that, I am curious to know exactly how sharp you can make a night photograph given whatever equipment/technique one could reasonably obtain without introducing excessive noise (I am hesitant to specify an exact ISO but if you can see obvious noise in a 100% crop, I'd say that's good enough). Noise reduction software is fine as long as the images remain sharp. Examples would be wonderful!
Click to expand...
Tough if the subject is moving. Otherwise, good tripod, base ISO, best aperture, long exposure.

For moving subject, modern sensor, big sensor, fast lens. I do not think there are any miracles.

Cheers,
Bert
 
Last edited:

Yes, the light was blue


Prisoners. :D

View attachment 5485807

Probably not what you are after but it will start giving us a benchmark of what you're looking for.
 
Last edited:
Actually, the first two are simply outstanding. Now I was looking for something slightly different yet I have to say I am extremely impressed by your technique. I have a hell of a hard time even taking a sharp photo at f/1.8 in the best light - I would never have dared try in low light.

A few quick questions - did you manually or automatic focus (or both)? If so, what was your technique? Did you use a tripod?

Also, I am either very impressed with the E-M1's lack of noise at ISO 3200 or very impressed with your noise reduction software (care to illuminate on which?)

Thanks for sharing.
 
MinAZ said:
Actually, the first two are simply outstanding. Now I was looking for something slightly different yet I have to say I am extremely impressed by your technique. I have a hell of a hard time even taking a sharp photo at f/1.8 in the best light - I would never have dared try in low light.

A few quick questions - did you manually or automatic focus (or both)? If so, what was your technique? Did you use a tripod?

Also, I am either very impressed with the E-M1's lack of noise at ISO 3200 or very impressed with your noise reduction software (care to illuminate on which?)

Thanks for sharing.
Click to expand...
Autofocus

No tripod, all handheld.

Generally no noise reduction either. Shot in raw.

Actually, there may be some noise reduction in the background of the ISO 12800 shot. I can't remember if I posted it before or after I messed around with it.
 
That is amazing, and I am speechless. I don't even bother to take shots under those conditions that you have anymore. Maybe I should start experimenting. Also kudos to the E-M1 as well!
 
MinAZ said:
Assuming that money and equipment is no object (within reasonable parameters - Hubble Space Telescope is out), has anyone had any success taking photos in very low light (e.g. candle-lit restaurant, night cityscape, forest in full moonlight, you get the idea...) that are tack-sharp or a very close approximation? Obviously, using artificial light is ruled out. Other than that, I am curious to know exactly how sharp you can make a night photograph given whatever equipment/technique one could reasonably obtain without introducing excessive noise (I am hesitant to specify an exact ISO but if you can see obvious noise in a 100% crop, I'd say that's good enough). Noise reduction software is fine as long as the images remain sharp. Examples would be wonderful!
Click to expand...
Depends on how much gear you throw at it, I suppose. This is what I do with a reasonable recent 24x zoom pocket P&S -

This was on a tripod at base ISO

This was on a tripod at base ISO

This was on a tripod, but the ISO was determined by the fact I was doing a video at the same time.

This was on a tripod, but the ISO was determined by the fact I was doing a video at the same time.

Henry

--
Henry Falkner - SH-50, SZ-30MR, SP-570UZ
www.pbase.com

Galleries by Henry Falkner

www.pbase.com
 
MinAZ said:
Assuming that money and equipment is no object (within reasonable parameters - Hubble Space Telescope is out), has anyone had any success taking photos in very low light (e.g. candle-lit restaurant, night cityscape, forest in full moonlight, you get the idea...) that are tack-sharp or a very close approximation? Obviously, using artificial light is ruled out. Other than that, I am curious to know exactly how sharp you can make a night photograph given whatever equipment/technique one could reasonably obtain without introducing excessive noise (I am hesitant to specify an exact ISO but if you can see obvious noise in a 100% crop, I'd say that's good enough). Noise reduction software is fine as long as the images remain sharp. Examples would be wonderful!
Click to expand...
Check out the technique that shoots multiple exposures for noise reduction. You can put your camera in multi-shot mode and fire away. I find 10-12 shots pretty much eliminates noise completely.

Of course, this only works for static scenes, though with an elementary knowledge of photoshop, ghosting is easy to eliminate.
 
MinAZ said:
Assuming that money and equipment is no object (within reasonable parameters - Hubble Space Telescope is out), has anyone had any success taking photos in very low light (e.g. candle-lit restaurant, night cityscape, forest in full moonlight, you get the idea...) that are tack-sharp or a very close approximation? Obviously, using artificial light is ruled out. Other than that, I am curious to know exactly how sharp you can make a night photograph given whatever equipment/technique one could reasonably obtain without introducing excessive noise (I am hesitant to specify an exact ISO but if you can see obvious noise in a 100% crop, I'd say that's good enough). Noise reduction software is fine as long as the images remain sharp. Examples would be wonderful!
Click to expand...
It all depends on how much light you have and if your subjects are moving much or not. If they're moving and you have very low light, you're going to have to keep the shutter speed high and push the iso and your results are going to suffer, even with the best full frame cameras. If your subject is quite still or motionless and you can take advantage of image stabilization or a tripod, you can shoot at a much lower shutter speed and keep the ISO quite a bit lower. With a full frame camera and depending on how large you plan on viewing the final image, you can get very sharp images at ISO 6400 with little noise. The biggest challenge in very low light becomes obtaining accurate focus, especially with a large aperture and a moving subject. Here are a variety of different low light images at different shutter speeds, hand held and tripod, little to no noise reduction applied.



c17e18b01b9644cab9607dd42805074d.jpg


484f8e53cd2b4a9e9f70ff70505934cd.jpg


02167897174947f98b2889751e0bf57b.jpg


2417dcdafdec4e578b926d0f7ab94b47.jpg


23351c79ed224b84ab666adf6d656587.jpg


47d33929118d40a5ab42a93ea227a357.jpg


This one has a film profile applied to it so that's added grain in the background and not the original noise.

4983fe94c2d64c0e8799516f2a20d3c8.jpg
 
Last edited:
MinAZ said:
Assuming that money and equipment is no object (within reasonable parameters - Hubble Space Telescope is out), has anyone had any success taking photos in very low light (e.g. candle-lit restaurant, night cityscape, forest in full moonlight, you get the idea...) that are tack-sharp or a very close approximation?
Click to expand...
How is this hard? 100 ISO, f8 or whatever you need for your DOF, and let the shutter fly as long as the exposure needs. So, you need a tripod and still subjects. More and more still as you have less and less light.

You should go out and experiment with different settings to get this. It is part of the fun, as far as someone who has had a DSLR for all of five months, is concerned.

Action shots are tougher and I am experimenting with what f-stops and zooms I need to catch barrel racing horses in dark arenas. So far I know f4 and my max ISO will not do it :(

Here are my night shot experiments (beer induced/fueled) with various errors but great learning experience:

Midnight with a full moon

Midnight with a full moon

Out of focus because of not knowing how to focus in dark and low f1.6

Out of focus because of not knowing how to focus in dark and low f1.6

Missed me as I remote fired the camera but decently lit background. Sun is down about 1 hour.

Missed me as I remote fired the camera but decently lit background. Sun is down about 1 hour.

F2 for shorter shutter time but couldn't stay still long enough for perfect sharpness

F2 for shorter shutter time but couldn't stay still long enough for perfect sharpness

Can't stand still enough at 30 seconds for f11 with wind hitting me

Can't stand still enough at 30 seconds for f11 with wind hitting me

What white balance for moon light, city lights, an a lamp post 100 feet away combined? Should have tried Auto WB :(
 
Last edited:
A photograph is not either "sharp" or "not sharp". A photograph exhibits, to a greater or lesser extent, undesirable effects of one or a combination of the following factors:
  • Camera movement
  • Object movement
  • Atmospheric light scattering
  • Analog/digital conversion signal noise
  • Lens optical imperfecttion
  • jpeg compression artifacts
  • Lens not properly focused
  • Too shallow depth of field
  • Computer processing artifacts
  • Inadequate display resolution
(And probably some others that I forget at the moment).

Some of these factors are indeed more likely to be beyond tolerable when there is a lack of light. However, in order to develop a solution, we must first know which of the above factors (there might well be more than one) we ought to eliminate in order to make the photograph appear "sharp".

Better equipment and better technique may push the ability to create "sharp" photograph with somewhat less light than otherwise. But the band of light intensity where better equipment and/or better photographer can create a "sharp" picture and less skilled photographer using lower quality equipment can not is quite narrow. Below it is the territory where the only solution, for any equipment and all photographers, is the obvious one: add some light.

MaxTux
 
I find the Hand-Held-Twilight feature in Sony cameras works remarkably well, and it even copes with moving traffic.

The alternative is a FF sensor with large pixels, as in for example the Sony A7 and A7s and comparable Nikons.

I don't have an A7 but presumably the HHT can be used in that camera for even better results.
 
MaxTux said:
A photograph is not either "sharp" or "not sharp". A photograph exhibits, to a greater or lesser extent, undesirable effects of one or a combination of the following factors:
  • Camera movement
  • Object movement
  • Atmospheric light scattering
  • Analog/digital conversion signal noise
  • Lens optical imperfecttion
  • jpeg compression artifacts
  • Lens not properly focused
  • Too shallow depth of field
  • Computer processing artifacts
  • Inadequate display resolution
(And probably some others that I forget at the moment).

Some of these factors are indeed more likely to be beyond tolerable when there is a lack of light. However, in order to develop a solution, we must first know which of the above factors (there might well be more than one) we ought to eliminate in order to make the photograph appear "sharp".

Better equipment and better technique may push the ability to create "sharp" photograph with somewhat less light than otherwise. But the band of light intensity where better equipment and/or better photographer can create a "sharp" picture and less skilled photographer using lower quality equipment can not is quite narrow. Below it is the territory where the only solution, for any equipment and all photographers, is the obvious one: add some light.

MaxTux
Click to expand...
It's significant to note that a photo can be highly detailed and still appear unsharp if it lacks contrast. Also, the threshold between "sharp" and "not sharp" is highly dependent on the individual that's viewing the image and how they're viewing it. It can be difficult to judge how sharp an image is unless we compare it with another one that has greater/lesser sharpness. Often, the same image with more noise will appear sharper. Our brains are funny that way :-)
 
Last edited:
Thank you sshoihet, this is EXACTLY what I am looking for! Especially the first two images... I was curious to see what can be achieved (and of course if I could get similar results). It seems from the photos you have posted that there is a great difference in quality of images from full frame to crop sensor. It is sad that I do not own a full frame camera (maybe someday) but I think even the crop sensor has some decent results. (BTW from an artistic point of view, I love the three pictures of the fire-dancing.)



If you don't mind I have a few questions.



First picture was shot at 1/25. Since the subject is a child (and the fire-dancer), how were you able to prevent motion blur on the subject side? Or did you just ask the people to hold *very* still?



Second, the picture of the girl spelunking, what was situation there and how did you take the photograph?
sshoihet said:
MinAZ said:
Assuming that money and equipment is no object (within reasonable parameters - Hubble Space Telescope is out), has anyone had any success taking photos in very low light (e.g. candle-lit restaurant, night cityscape, forest in full moonlight, you get the idea...) that are tack-sharp or a very close approximation? Obviously, using artificial light is ruled out. Other than that, I am curious to know exactly how sharp you can make a night photograph given whatever equipment/technique one could reasonably obtain without introducing excessive noise (I am hesitant to specify an exact ISO but if you can see obvious noise in a 100% crop, I'd say that's good enough). Noise reduction software is fine as long as the images remain sharp. Examples would be wonderful!
Click to expand...
It all depends on how much light you have and if your subjects are moving much or not. If they're moving and you have very low light, you're going to have to keep the shutter speed high and push the iso and your results are going to suffer, even with the best full frame cameras. If your subject is quite still or motionless and you can take advantage of image stabilization or a tripod, you can shoot at a much lower shutter speed and keep the ISO quite a bit lower. With a full frame camera and depending on how large you plan on viewing the final image, you can get very sharp images at ISO 6400 with little noise. The biggest challenge in very low light becomes obtaining accurate focus, especially with a large aperture and a moving subject. Here are a variety of different low light images at different shutter speeds, hand held and tripod, little to no noise reduction applied.

c17e18b01b9644cab9607dd42805074d.jpg


484f8e53cd2b4a9e9f70ff70505934cd.jpg


02167897174947f98b2889751e0bf57b.jpg


2417dcdafdec4e578b926d0f7ab94b47.jpg


23351c79ed224b84ab666adf6d656587.jpg


47d33929118d40a5ab42a93ea227a357.jpg


This one has a film profile applied to it so that's added grain in the background and not the original noise.

4983fe94c2d64c0e8799516f2a20d3c8.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Using a stabilized lens helps also. The following examples were all hand held using a Nikon VR lens and the results of 3 bracketed shots each, micro aligned and composited with Oloneo and PPd in PS:



2515fc6a642942758aff7f3358a9910e.jpg




07b2a13892ed444aabb40391ac82eed3.jpg




8d182e3b09814ab9bd1442fb81034892.jpg


These were taken a while ago with an old Nikon D90 at ISO 3200. Compositing bracketed shots removes some noise and I use Topaz Denoise sometimes.
 
MinAZ said:
Thank you sshoihet, this is EXACTLY what I am looking for! Especially the first two images... I was curious to see what can be achieved (and of course if I could get similar results). It seems from the photos you have posted that there is a great difference in quality of images from full frame to crop sensor. It is sad that I do not own a full frame camera (maybe someday) but I think even the crop sensor has some decent results. (BTW from an artistic point of view, I love the three pictures of the fire-dancing.)

If you don't mind I have a few questions.

First picture was shot at 1/25. Since the subject is a child (and the fire-dancer), how were you able to prevent motion blur on the subject side? Or did you just ask the people to hold *very* still?

Second, the picture of the girl spelunking, what was situation there and how did you take the photograph?
Click to expand...


Yes, I do a fair amount of low light work and although my D7000 and D7100 are very good, I struggled to produce images that were as good as I wanted. The D600 is about 1 stop better in low light and the viewfinder is much nicer.



For the image at 1/25s the people were quite still, I shot several frames on continuous high and chose the one that was sharpest. Lens was the Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 afs hand held.



The girl in the cave is my daughter, the cave is an old train tunnel where the roof and parts of the sides have fallen in. We were exploring the cave and i got her to pose for some photos. Lens was the Nikon 16-85mm and i think it was hand held and I bounced a bit of flash off the rocks.



Here is what the cave looks like from another angle, as you can see there was not a lot of space to stand in front of her to take the shot :-) It took me several shots to get what i was looking for, I was more concerned with not falling or wrecking the ice. We were out for fun and it was pretty cold :-)



474acfbf52d345fdbc5f2bff19a45575.jpg
 
edispics said:
Using a stabilized lens helps also. The following examples were all hand held using a Nikon VR lens and the results of 3 bracketed shots each, micro aligned and composited with Oloneo and PPd in PS:

These were taken a while ago with an old Nikon D90 at ISO 3200. Compositing bracketed shots removes some noise and I use Topaz Denoise sometimes.
Click to expand...
Looks like Old Montreal, one of my favourite and challenging places to shoot each summer and a big reason why I bought a full frame camera :-) I like to photograph people and that really limits how low you can drop the shutter speed and you have to start compromising depth of field and allowing some motion blur.

Here are a few from the last two summers that I grabbed off facebook, hoping to be back there soon :-)

1713e68a3aba4b64ba94675f7da70bb3.jpg


1925246e8cdd40d09ebadf44d170d2e6.jpg




93ebdbc4d271410c836e272d939af9ba.jpg




-Stephen
 
MinAZ said:
Assuming that money and equipment is no object (within reasonable parameters - Hubble Space Telescope is out), has anyone had any success taking photos in very low light (e.g. candle-lit restaurant, night cityscape, forest in full moonlight, you get the idea...) that are tack-sharp or a very close approximation? Obviously, using artificial light is ruled out. Other than that, I am curious to know exactly how sharp you can make a night photograph given whatever equipment/technique one could reasonably obtain without introducing excessive noise (I am hesitant to specify an exact ISO but if you can see obvious noise in a 100% crop, I'd say that's good enough). Noise reduction software is fine as long as the images remain sharp. Examples would be wonderful!
Click to expand...
Using a tripod is the most obvious solution. I would recommend a strong, heavy one — nothing quite damps slight camera motion as much as mass, and with contemporary high-resolution images we can see slight camera motion between frames more than ever.

Other techniques help too, such as locking your mirror up and using a remote shutter trigger, such as a cable release or the self-timer. Wind is a common source of flutter, so a calm night can help, or hanging something heavy under the tripod — like your camera bag.

It was windy here:

737f66d62b314b69b3f7803569d455be.jpg


Now I often don’t worry about slight camera shake because that can produce a more impressionistic view of the scene:

53685ee312b243cba61fd2efae042415.jpg




--

The Refracted Light

A website about the Art and Science of Photography
therefractedlight.blogspot.com therefractedlight.blogspot.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C
Struggling mightily to achieve tack sharp image quality on wildlife, especially birds in flight
2 3 4
Replies
60
Views
45K
HicHic
HicHic
Phocal
  • Photo Photo
The Little White Chronicles: Little White Hunts the Last Light
Replies
6
Views
104K
Sujiar
S
L
Panny G9M2 In-door artificial lit "school" music concert @150mm , mechanical vs electorical shutter?
Replies
5
Views
2K
jrsforums
J
S
Z8 Subject Detection Inaccurate in Low (but not that low) light
6 7 8
Replies
149
Views
33K
SCoombs
S
P
Comparing low light performance of different cameras
4 5 6
Replies
113
Views
65K
DanielVaughan
D

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top