Photography Lighting Tutorial - Candles

Following on from my tests using a simple bedside lamp which worked out so well, in this part of our photography lighting tutorial series, I will take a look at another simple light source that anyone can use – and one that just shouts romance! .

In this shot I used three candles and found that together they gave off slightly less light that the bedside lamp. The quality of the light is also slightly different; rather than the diffused light produced by the lampshade, the flames are point light sources which produce nice highlights on shiny surfaces (like Natalia’s lips). Because of the limited light, I switched to a simple 50mm fixed focal length lens (the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II) for this shot. This gave me a shutter speed or 1/100th sec at f/1.8, ISO400. As with the bedside lamp shots I used a tripod. There is an explanation of these settings in Exposure and ISO-Exposure.

Avoiding Camera Shake

Bedside lights are not very bright, so camera shake is the main obstacle to success with this technique. For those with a DSLR, a cheap 50mm lens is a great investment; the one I used is only about $80 and produced results of very similar quality to my professional quality L series zoom lens which costs ten times as much!

If you are shooting with a compact camera then you will definitely need to use a tripod, but as long as the model stays still you should get good results. Take lots of shots though to make sure you get one that is sharp, and try using the camera's timer to reduce the risk of you moving the camera when you press the shutter release.

White Balance

As with the bedside lamp, you man need to experiment with different White Balance settings on your camera when using this type of lighting. My Canon 40D was set to Auto White Balance when I took the shot opposite, and I was pleased with the warm glow that it cast. By overriding the Auto setting, I could have increased this further or produced a cool blue image – its a technique worth expermenting with!

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