hi,

Anyone have any tips on photographing people in low light outside like in a forest with out using a flash or other lighting equipment? I ran into this problem while I was with a group a people hunting for mushrooms. I wanted to preserve the natural atmospheric lighting but the best I could do was up my iso and open my aperture to 5.6 but I had to keep my shutter speed at at least 1/60 so the people would be as sharp as possible. My results were so grainy and noisy that I had to work really hard in post processing to get anything halfway decent. I have included a link to some of the pic. I added them to an old post so the pictures from the mushroom hunt are #2-5 (#5 being the worst of the good ones, I am not even going to post the bad ones.)

Any suggestions and tips would be awesome!

mushroom hunt pictures

Actually, I rather liked the graininess. This forum post includes a technique in PS for reducing noise without the need for a plug-in.

One of the problems in your images is the relative contrast between the occasional areas of sky (highlights) and the darker tones. You can try changing the metering to centre-weighted to retain the people (and make the surroundings even eerier). Alternatively, use reflectors, which are bulky and not very effective in low light. Other than the techniques you used, I'm afraid I'd go for a flash unit, but you can use a "soft box" attachment on it if it's external or gum a cigarette paper in front if it's a pop-up (my favourite low-tech tip). In the latter case, there's little point, but you can use flash exposure compensation to attenuate the harsh effect.

If you do use flash, keep the ISO setting as low as possible - no point making a bad situation worse.

this will help me alot! thank you both of you! I learned something!

I think the pictures are delightful as they are. There is no free lunch unfortunately but I image you have some lee-way there. Your models are pretty static so I think you could easily drop the ISO to 800 and go down to 1/30 maybe even more if you have image stabilisation. The bark of the trees will be tricking your camera into thinking it is darker than it really is so you could underexpose by a stop or two. If you are comfortable with manual settings try taking a light measurement on the palm of your hand and then increasing the exposure by one step. I don't know what lens you are stuck with, can't you open it up a bit more?.

I have a difficult time photographing people because they move and I only have a split second to snap the picture. I do have a light meter but have not been using it because I only have two hands, so I usually opt for just my camera. But metering off my hand or lighter blue jeans, or even metering the shadows and making the exposure corrections is defiantly an option (time permitting). However, I really had to resurrect the photos from the dead because of low light.