Low Light Photography Made Easy! _ REDUCE NOISE without Flash

Well, I bought this big old camera for higher quality photos. Yeah, I'm still seeing so much grain in my night photos. What am I doing wrong? Listen, I get it. Low light photography can be very intimidating, but what if I told you it's not as hard as you think? What if I told you you can still get some pretty amazing low light photos with a small sensor, point and shoot camera like this one, or even an F4 lens? Don't worry, I got you. Jason Vong's got five tips to improve your terrible low light photography. And no, don't worry, I'm not gonna tell you to go out to buy a flash or use this built-in flash from top of your camera, because these things here are garbage. Yeah, I said it. And this helpful photography guide is sponsored by NordVPN. Tip number one, finding available light. Because let's be honest here, if you're shooting in this dark as **** situation, not even the Sony A7S II, the low light beast of a camera can save your butt. These product shots I posted on Instagram were all shot with the available lighting around me. When you're in a busy city, you're bound to run into a bunch of window paint that provide a great amount of sight lighting. Try to position the subject or object of interest in front of the other lights in the background for maximum bokeh. Tip number two, long exposure. It sounds intimidating, but it is the easiest thing you can do for low light photography. Long exposure is a technique that allows in more light into the sensor of the camera via shutter speed. Typically what would cause a lot of noise in our photos is when we shoot at too high of an ISO setting, like 800 and above. We're gonna talk more about ISO in just a bit. So in order to minimize the noise, we will shoot at a relatively low ISO, like 100, and use our shutter speed to gather in more light. Let's demonstrate with some delicious Chinese food. First thing we need to do is to set our ISO at 100. This is crucial for noiseless photos. Next, we can dial in our aperture. I'm gonna go for 5.6 just for example purposes, but feel free to shoot at whatever aperture you would like. Now onwards to shutter speed. I'll be looking at my metering and I wanna make sure that I'm between negative 0.3 and 0.0 so I'm not under or overexposing my shot. I will then adjust my shutter speed until I am in between those values. In this case, it's gonna be a two second exposure to get the shot. Now before you take the photo, make sure that you have self timer turned on, at least two seconds. Once all of that is ready, go ahead and hit that shutter button. Try not to move the camera or any of the objects in the shot during this time. If done correctly, it should look crystal clear. And just to show you an example, if we were to shoot this handheld or without long exposure, we would have had to shoot upwards to ISO 3200, which would not have been ideal. By the way, these delicious pork dumplings are from a restaurant called Din Tai Fung. Anytime my friends and I want to go to these restaurant, we would ask each other, hey, DTF? God, that's a terrible joke. See, the beauty of it is it doesn't matter if you're using an F4 lens. Most of my nightscape shots are shot between F5.6 to F9. The only thing you need for long exposure is just your camera and a tripod. But if you don't wanna lug around a tripod or you're just trying to be discreet about your photography, you can get yourself a mini tripod or a GorillaPod right here. Links to my favorite tripod accessories for long exposure is in the description box below. But what if you're in a situation where tripods are just not allowed, period? Well, you can just use a ball pod. It's not a tripod, it doesn't have three legs, but it offers similar stability and limited articulation, just enough for you to get the framing of your shot. Ball pod. Now, I just want to reiterate again that it is crucial you don't touch the camera during the long exposure process or else you will risk getting a blurry photo. Same with the object or subject of interest. Make sure they stay static the whole time. However, moving objects can also make pretty interesting photos as well. For example, here's my shot of Seattle right here. The landscape remains static while the cars driving by create these nice streak of lights as they are passing by. Again, it is the main object or subject of interest that needs to stay static the whole time. Moving on, what about shooting human subjects in low light? Since we humans can't stay completely still, long enough for the camera to take a photo, we will have to resort to other methods, which I'll show you now. Number three, know your ISO limit. In case you don't know what ISO is, it's pretty much a way that your camera can digitally brighten up the image. But when pushed too far, you'll see those noise and grain that you're not too fond of. So here's my suggestion. If you're shooting with a full frame camera, shoot under ISO 6400. If you're shooting with a crop sensor camera, shoot under 1600. You'll probably still see some noise, but as long as you don't go over your limit, it's not gonna look too bad. And I would implore you to experiment to find out what is your ISO limit, because hey, some of you probably wouldn't even mind shooting at 256,000 ISO. But if you didn't mind, you probably wouldn't be watching this video. Now, it's kind of a taboo for me to even recommend this, but if your camera has a built-in noise reduction feature, try using it. If you like it, you like it. I mean, some people would give you crap for it, but hey, if it looks good, who cares what they say? Before we move on to the next three tips, I just wanna thank NordVPN for help making this low light guide possible. For the past seven months, I've been protecting my internet activity with NordVPN. Because I've been traveling a lot more this year, I'm constantly connecting to a public Wi-Fi, whether it be at airports, hotels, or local cafes. The last thing I want is my email accounts and social media logins compromised. NordVPN is a service that encrypts all of my data at risky locations like those, and it's incredibly easy to use. It just takes a couple of clicks on a desktop browser or a mobile app, and we're good to go. If you're about to travel yourself or if you frequent public Wi-Fi spots a lot, sign up for a free trial now and try it risk-free for 30 days. While NordVPN can't protect me from making you spend money, it can protect you from getting hacked. Go to nordvpn.com slash Jason Vong to get 75% off a three-year plan and use Jason Vong for an extra month for free. Now back to our regular programming. Tip number four, I and many other camera channels would often say Fastland, such an F1.8 or an F1.4 would be great in low light situations because it allows your camera to absorb more light into the sensor. Fastlands like an F1.8 or F1.4 allow you to go handheld and shoot without a tripod and get some great results, and it allows you to keep under your ISO limit like we were talking about in tip number three to prevent noise and grain. By the way, if you're a longtime follower of this channel, this here is not mine, it's my friend's. I'm helping her sell to get a Sony a6400. Let me know if you wanna see a video like that. Her word's not mine. She said this camera's too big and she wants something smaller. This method is different from long exposure because it doesn't require a tripod. Fast aperture lenses also gathers in more light to the sensor, albeit not as much as long exposure would, but the trade-off is that it allows you to get the shot handheld. Just make sure you stay within your ISO limit like we talked about earlier for the least amount of noise. Not only do fast aperture lenses allow in more light, but they also give you beautiful bokeh, aka the background blur, aka the blur you see in your phone's portrait mode. Here are some lens recommendation. If you are a crop sensor shooter, I would recommend picking up a 30mm f1.4 or similar. If you're a full-frame shooter, I would recommend picking up a 50mm f1.8 or similar. These are usually nice budget options for general photography. Tip number five, if your camera doesn't have any sort of built-in in-body stabilization, choose your next lens to have some sort of stabilization. Generally, your shutter speed should match or exceed the focal length you're shooting in. For example, if you're shooting at 50mm, your shutter speed should be at 1 over 50 or more. If you're shooting at 200mm, then your shutter speed should be 1 over 200 or more. If you're a crop sensor shooter, double that or exceed that. For example, 50mm, you'll be shooting at 1 over 100 or more. 200mm, you'll be shooting at 1 over 400 or more. But having built-in in-body stabilization or some sort of lens stabilization allow you to bend the rule just a bit. Having a stabilized lens or a stabilized camera body will allow you to shoot a little under the recommended shutter speed, allowing in a bit more light while staying under your ISO limit, but still giving you sharp results. And for our final tip of the day, in the words of froknowsphoto.com, I shoot raw. If you have time to process your photo, then shoot raw. Generally, softwares like Lightroom and Capture One Pro have better noise reduction control. That's why pros opt to do the noise reductions themselves instead of letting the camera do it. And if you choose to do it that way, just don't overdo it on the noise reduction. But hey, again, if you don't want to do any sort of post-processing yourself, you don't have to shoot in raw. You can just shoot in JPEG and use the built-in noise reduction because, I mean, it won't get really tight, right? By the way, if you need more tips on improving your photography, check out the video that I did last month. And let me know in the comments down below, how else can I help you improve your photos? Tag me in your next Instagram post if you use any of the tips from this video or from the last video because I would love to check out your work. At Jason V Media on Instagram. Guys, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.