Low light museum image

My first attempt at low light photography. This was taken recently at the National Museum of Singapore from the Treasures of the World from the British Museum exhibition. The image is of the bust of the emperor Hadrian.

The light was extremely low and understandably no flash was allowed in the museum. I’ve toyed with my recently acquired D7100 and have very little experience with this camera. Needless to say, I am impressed with its handling of low light. I had no tripod and the image was taken handheld.

I will highly appreciate any comments and critique. (For some reason the quality got compromised heavily during resizing – perhaps I’m doing something wrong? Using IrfanView).

First, welcome to the forum. Considering the light it came out pretty good. If this is something you plan to do a lot then you might want to consider a faster lens like the 35mm 1.8. They are not expensive and are sharp as a tack. Perfect for shooting in low light.

Biltong said:

The light was extremely low

Click to expand...

The Exif showing with your images says Exposure Compensation -2.67 EV. That will cause your pictures to be very dark, and seems unintended, and counterproductive to your effort and result. That is reset by holding the +/- button by the shutter button down, and rotating the rear wheel back to zero. That display is the top LCD.

If you shoot RAW, with a 1.8 lens, then you will get a much better light. I have shot with D3300 and 35mm F1.8 in low light and for a stationary object with steady hands you can easily shoot at ISO 400, F1.8 at around 1/25 sec.

As commented if you intend to take more such shots, invest in an F1.8 lens - 35mm, 50mm or even 85mm, and practice with slow speeds in low light. With proper technique you can steady the hands to get sharp shots at 1/25. Another trick to get vibration free shots is to fire a burst of 3-5 shots. The later shots will have less vibration.

One advantage of shooting at or below ISO 400 in RAW is that you can recover relatively noise free shadows. In your case the bust would then be properly lighted.

Here is an example


As is from Camera


After Adjusting levels in NX-D

WayneF said:

The Exif showing with your images says Exposure Compensation -2.67 EV. That will cause your pictures to be very dark, and seems unintended, and counterproductive to your effort and result. That is reset by holding the +/- button by the shutter button down, and rotating the rear wheel back to zero. That display is the top LCD.

Click to expand...

Unless they were deliberately going for this low key look with I like. Without the -2.67 EV they wouldn't have got the dark background and either shutter would have been slower or ISO higher, both of which might have led to an inferior shot in my opinion. If it was unintended then certainly worth pointing out but I think this might have been intentional.

Good job btw, I like the image. I'd also recommend getting a 35mm 1.8, a great small, inexpensive lens ideal for situations such as this.

Thank you so much for the input.

Firstly, my apologies, I should have mentioned that my intention was to create this low-key effect. Also, there was a security guard in the background who refused to get out of the frame, so I had to do something to get her out of the picture.

I've also played around with various settings to see what happened with each, and admittedly, this photo was by chance. It was probably the 6th image of the same subject...

I do have a 35mm f1.8 but stupidly left it in the hotel room on that specific day. Agreed, it would have been a much better choice of lens but somehow I did not think of it beforehand. (It merely shows the difference between an amateur like me and a more polished professional photographer who will do much more planning beforehand).

Again, thank you very much for the comments.