We all know that nothing can beat natural lights when it comes to photography. The contrast, brightness and everything that we get from natural lights, we can never get from the artificial lights. So in this post we’ll learn how to use natural lights for indoor photo shoots effectively.
Before we get into details let’s talk about little things we can do to get a perfect shot indoor. First of all you should get into the room you want to shoot and then spend some time to see how lights get into the room at different time of the day and select the spot where you want to place your subject and see what is the best time for you to shoot the photo according to your need and what gears you will need for that particular photo shoot.
After completing the above steps we will now get into the camera settings, we now know what we actually want so that we can adjust our camera settings accordingly, first and foremost thing we should do is, we should adjust White Balance (WB) according to the lightning condition in the room, after that we should adjust ISO, most of the time you should keep ISO to 800 and you can adjust it if you need to. We should keep our camera’s Aperture: f/2.8 (or the widest possible). Shutter speed at 1/100 sec or higher. We must keep in mind that we should select Aperture Priority mode in camera to make these changes for indoor shooting.
After making these changes we will now move to the final step, which is how to make the most out of natural lighting, how we should place our subject and more.
- It is always recommended that we should use reflectors to reflect the light on the subject.
- Turn of the artificial lights if there’s enough light coming in naturally, because natural light doesn’t like competition. Electric lights can affect your white balance. This is because the color of light varies with the source. Skin tones can look odd when artificial light mixes with natural light.
- We should use a light catching backdrop. A backdrop will help catch the light and bounce it back on your subject. We can use a plain white sheet as a backdrop.
- We can use a mirror for a model photo shoot, we can hang a mirror on the window and make our model sit in front of the mirror and then shoot the photo, keep in mind your reflection should never come on mirror.
These are the basics for shooting a perfect indoor photo, go on and try to shoot something interesting and always keep in mind the more you do it the better you get at it. And in case if you are not satisfied with the final image, you can always get help from Photo Retouching service provider or do it yourself.
