Bright light from a window can make your subject too dark.
You can greatly improve your daylight photos indoors by keeping the following things in mind.
Let in all the light you can
Provide as much natural light as possible by opening curtains and blinds. This way you can keep from using
your camera's flash, which generally washes out color and casts harsh shadows.
Avoid standing in front of windows
Placing your subject in front of a bright window will leave them silhouetted against the bright light
shining in. The light will often appear too bright, and your subject too dark.
Photos taken at dusk or dawn produce softer shadows.
There is such a thing as too much light when photographing outdoors. Use these tricks to preserve color and
detail.
Avoid harsh midday sunlight
The same way your camera's flash can wash out color, the intense midday sun can mute colors and cast
deep shadows, reducing warmth and detail.
The best time of day for photos is either early morning or early evening. Colors are warmer and shadows
are softer.
Photo taken without flash. Colors are more realistic.
Disable your flash
Using your flash should be a last resort in most situations. It mutes color and casts stark, deep shadows (especially
unflattering for portraits).
On some cameras, press the flash button and select Flash off.
Take advantage of indirect, ambient light from lamps, overhead lights, or candles instead. Set your camera to the
Auto shooting mode. It will slow its shutter speed (the time needed to capture enough light) when the flash is off.
To avoid blurring, use a tripod or stable surface to keep your camera steady.
There are other tools you can use to improve your indoor shots.
Photo taken without white balance adjustment, and one with white balance set to Tungsten.
Adjust white balance
Artificial light can produce unnatural tinting in your photos. Many cameras will compensate for this automatically.
As accurate as automatic white balance is most of the time, it's not always perfect. For more control, set your
camera to Tungsten (normal incandescent bulbs), or Fluorescent to fix color.
A long exposure can produce breathtaking night shots.
The same rules for low-light conditions indoors apply to the outdoors as well. Avoid the flash and use a tripod
to steady your camera. Holding perfectly still is especially important outdoors. You will often have even less
light than when you're indoors. This means longer exposure time (sometimes as long as a few seconds).
Learn more about
night and low-light photography.
Here are a couple additional options to improve outdoor photos.
Adjust ISO for light sensitivity
If your camera allows you to adjust ISO, set it low (somewhere around 50 or 100) for rich detail in
low-light.
Use Night Portrait shooting mode
For low-light photos with moving subjects like people, set your digital camera to a night portrait
setting, if available. This uses the flash very briefly at the
beginning of a long exposure to capture detail. It still helps for you to keep your camera as steady
as possible, but it's not absolutely necessary in this mode.
Take a free online class
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