Available light Photography

Nikon D7500 , Tamron 150-600 mm, Dx-format, Crop factor 1,4
f/5.6, 1/400 sec, ISO 1250, manual mode, freehand

Available light is our topic today. In Madagascar, you often have to come to terms with less than optimal lighting conditions. The shown photo of a red-bellied lemur (Eulemur rubriventer) was taken in the Akanin’ny Nofy reserve. The little lemur jumped around in the middle of the rainforest and was therefore not easy to photograph. The dense canopy of leaves hardly let a ray of light through. Photographing lemurs in the shade without flash? Only with the available light? Most photographers would refuse.

In fact, it took a good portion of patience and of course manual adjustments on the camera for exactly this photo. An automatic does not usually bring a satisfying result in difficult lighting conditions like these. For the manual photography of lemurs, you have to have a good feeling for the settings and act fast – otherwise, the animal will have disappeared before you have taken a picture. The short shutter speed of 1/400 was necessary for the red-bellied lemur, otherwise, the fast movements of the lemur would have blurred the image. Since the animal did not wait for the photographer and moved on steadily, it was necessary to take pictures freehand. Because of the dark environment, a relatively high ISO was then chosen, but this does not bring any disturbing noise into the picture. It took quite a while until the lemur sat for a short moment in such a way that the play of light hit exactly his face: In the photo, there is now one eye in the light, one in the shadow. That makes the picture interesting! At the laptop at home, only a small correction of the tonal value was needed.