Anytime you’re taking progress photos on a construction site you’re going to be dealing with dust and dark areas. The combination of these two things makes it very difficult to take a good picture. What happens when you’re taking a photo in low light the first thing you want to do is turn on your flash. This works for most situations however when you’re on a construction site you often get a bunch of white dots all over your picture. These dots are caused by the flash bouncing off the dust particles near the lens which then find their way onto your picture. Above are (2) photos taken in the same area with different cameras. The one on the left was taken with a hand-held Point and Shoot camera with a flash and the photo on the right was taken with a hand-held SLR camera.

So how do we solve this Dust Dot issue?

You will want to take the flash out of the equation. There are a couple of different options to try depending on you equipment and skill level. I’m going to talk about different options for different types of cameras. If you’re taking photos with a typical “Point and Shoot” camera found on most job sites check out the Point and Shoot options or if you’re using a more advanced camera check out our SLR (Single-Lens Reflex) camera options.

Option #1 – SLR Tripod:  Using the camera’s Automatic Setting, Force the Flash Off, Turn on the Timer, Set the camera on a tripod and take your picture. The tripod will eliminate the blur caused from a hand-held shot in low light without a flash. Note that it can be a pain to carry around a tripod for every shot. If you have an SLR camera I recommend Option #2.

Option #2 – SLR Hand Held:  It’s my option that this is the best option. Change the ISO (speed of the film) to your camera’s highest setting, something like 1600. This will create a more grainy shot but will allow you to shoot in low light. Anyway, next adjust the aperture to it’s largest opening, this lets the most light in, something like 2.0 – 4.0 depending on the quality of your lens. Lastly adjust the shutter speed so that the exposure is correct. As a rule of thumb you probably don’t want anything less that 1/60sec however I’ll go as low as 1/20sec and still get good looking shots. Then with a steady hand take your shot.

Option #3 – Point & Shoot Tripod: Using the camera’s Automatic Setting, Force the Flash Off, Turn on the Timer, Set the camera on a tripod and take your picture. The tripod will eliminate the blur caused from a hand-held shot in low light without a flash. Note that it can be a pain to carry around a tripod for every shot.

Option #4 – Point & Shoot Hand Held: Some camera’s will have a “Night Mode” that is good to use when shooting in dusty low light situations.

In the end, I recommend trying out these different options. Figure out what works best for your camera. Also let me know if you’ve found other solutions that I haven’t mentioned and I’ll post them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Tip Center. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.