Low-key photos

Lisabella1965

Can you tell me the best way to take low-key, half in shadow photos with this camera?

http://livio69.tumblr.com/post/66573038361

bruto

It's mostly not about the camera but about the lighting. You need a dark, preferably black, featureless background, and light from a single source that is not diffused. A fairly directional lamp, or an off camera flash would be likely candidates. Watch out for potential reflections in the room.

In the picture shown, note that the light comes from one side only, such that only the lit side of the face is shown. There is no other ambient light showing. The exposure is made to the illuminated portion of the face only, and the surrounding area is entirely unlit.

A camera's built in meter will tend to overexpose in this situation, trying to turn the black areas to gray. You will probably have either to switch to spot metering, and meter the illuminated part of the face, or to switch to manual metering and purposely underexpose.

I don't know just how a Canon works here but in manual mode, Nikon's auto ISO feature will tend to cancel out underexposure, so one would have to turn auto ISO off and stick to manual ISO. Keep ISO low to minimize noise in the black areas.