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Candlelight Photography
With Christmas coming up, I’m sure you’re gonna do a lot of photography around candlelight. You can use the candlelight to your advantage because it creates a gorgeous, warm flickering light that’s flattering to just about anyone.
Few pointers.
Use a tripod:
This is a must. You really need a tripod for this type of photography. I use a Manfrotto 055XDB with a 484RC2 Ball Head.
Light more than one candle:
Just one candle isn’t gonna get you anywhere when shooting portrait. Photography is all about recording light: the more you have, the better your photo. So just grab yourself a few extra candles.
Use manual focus:
Some cameras a candlelight setting, if yours doesn’t have such a thing, go for manual focus. Autofocus will be useless.
No flash:
This might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people turn on their flash when photographing a candle lit scene.
ISO:
As tempted as you might be to bump up your ISO; don’t. Try to keep it SO below 400 or things will get grainy on you real fast and it ain’t pretty. This is why you use a tripod!
Shutter speed:
A slow shutter speed lets in more light, but only use a really slow shutter speed (1/10 – 1/15) when photographing a motionless scene.
Candlelight photography isn’t really suitable for spontaneous snapshots, but it can sure get you some pretty images.
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Good tips.
One thing you haven’t touched on is the one I usually have the most problems getting right (at least in camera, I usually end up tweaking in Lightroom): white balance. Theoretically, tungsten should be the best setting – because a glowing thread in an incandescent bulb is basically fire – but it rarely looks right.
@Karohemd:
I skipped that part because I prefer to set my white balance manually using Kelvin temperature. I never use presettings to be honest.
Over the years I learned to look at the light to see what temp I have to use. I mostly shoot candlelight at 2000K, unless I specifically want the warm golden light like I used in these shots.
*nods* White Balance is a bit too fiddly for me to set manually (I do everything else) and unless you’re shooting in a clinical studio environment, it’ll keep changing, anyway so it’s generally something I tweak in post. 2KK almost sounds a bit too cool to me but I guess this is also something where personal taste comes in.
@Karohemd:
This was shot at 2800K because I wanted a pretty warm glow that would work with the red in the photo. But oftentimes candle light is way overdone when it comes to kt.