Holiday Lights - getting great photos in the dark

250 strands of lights, 100 individual bulbs per strand, for a grand total of 25,000 Italian imported twinkle lights. I dedicate this article to your family Christmas! Drumroll please…. Joy to the World!

Tis the season for twinkle lights! I know most of you will want a beautiful photo in front of some of the many beautiful displays this season but getting that pic is often a tall order for your phone so I want to talk about what can we do with a minimal kit to make this season a little brighter. The answers are much easier than you might think.

First, let me just make sure we’re all on the same page, here’s what 99% of parents are getting when they take a photo in front of holiday lights. It’s not that it’s dark but it can be quite grainy and the colors can look pretty washed out. The problem here is that there is way more light on the background, or rather, coming from the background than is on your subjects. By adding some light we can get things looking good. Maybe you’ve been OK with this type of pic up until now… but honestly, it’s not much work to get a much better photo.

iPhone only, you can clearly see that the backgound is brighter than the kids which is the reverse of what we would really like.

What I like about this image from my iPhone is that we do have bright colors and it’s sharp enough for sharing on social. On the downside, it’s not going to make a great print and the light on their faces isn’t great. Because the brightest part of the image isn’t the main subject, it doesn’t work as well visually as those images I made with extra light that I’ll show you below.

There are at least 3-4 solutions to this problem, but I’m going to concentrate on just two: one for a phone photographer and a second for a dedicated camera.

1. LED panel lights (video lights) are a good solution for your phone. A tiny LED panel allows you to add just a small amount of light to balance with the twinkle lights and it’s compact, lightweight, and inexpensive.

   Let’s look at an example of the difference it can make below (left). The upside is that now the kids are nicely lit up and the colors of the trees still look great in the background.

   The one downside is that the people can be a bit squinty with light in their faces and we need to give them time to acclimate to the light before shooting. Also, the image does have a tiny amount of blur because we’re still using a long shutter speed (iPhone’s night mode) and people can move during the exposure; although the iPhone does a pretty great job. 4/5 stars for me.

Here is what adding an LED light to the image looks like. Great light but has the one downside of sometimes causing squinty faces.

Here is the image taken with a “real” camera and an flash. Great balanced light for both the twinkle lights and the kids. Of course the only downside is that you have to bring/carry your camera.

2. Bring your dedicated camera and/or use a flash (not the one built into your phone). The flash on your phone is unfortunately really underpowered for many occasions, like holiday lights, and can often make your results even worse than without it. A flash on a dedicated “real” camera has a ton of power and can really give the best results. The only trick to using it is that you need to set the exposure of the camera so that the lights are turning out in the background and then use that setting for your flashed images. If your camera has a night scene mode you could try that, or you can set your camera to these settings and then experiment to fine tune it.

1. Set the ISO to 3200. You’ll see this setting on the settings screen and it controls how sensitive your camera is to light. 3200 is a higher setting but it’s what I use at night a lot.

2. Set the shutter speed to 1/60. This controls how long the camera is open to expose the light for the photo. This is the setting we’ll be fine tuning to control the light in the background.

3. Turn on/flip up the flash and make sure it’s in auto mode. Basic forward flash is all we’re look for in this scenario. You can of course get more pro, but this is supposed to be quick and easy.

4. Experiment without the kids or your flash before you begin making the photos you really want. Do this by checking your test images and adjusting the shutter speed. If your background is too bright try 1/125 or 1/250 or if it’s too dark try 1/30. Once you’ve got the twinkle lights dialed in…turn on your flash and grab the family… you’re ready to go.

If you have questions hit me up in the comments and good luck!