Mastering Wildlife Photography in Low Light

Jump into any social media group for wildlife photographers and it won’t take long before you start seeing complaints about noise—the grainy, often distracting speckles that appear in images, particularly in low-light conditions. Noise can significantly detract from the overall quality of an image, making it essential to understand how to minimize it effectively.

Today, we have a handful of AI-based programs that photographers rely upon to help clean up their images and make them noise-free. While that’s fine, relying on programs to remove noise is just treating a symptom, it’s not dealing with the root problem that’s creating the symptom in the first place. It’s also fair to say that “junk in is junk out.” That is, while I don’t use any AI-based programs, for those that do, the output you create with them will be all the better if you give it a better file to work with in the first place.

The Exposure Triangle: A Quick Recap

Before diving deeper into noise reduction, it's important to revisit the fundamentals of exposure, particularly the exposure triangle.

The exposure triangle consists of three key elements:

• Aperture: The size of the lens opening, which controls the amount of light entering the camera. A wider aperture (lower f-stop number) allows more light to hit the sensor, which is crucial in low-light conditions. If you’ve ever heard the term “fast glass,” it comes from the aperture. This is because your autofocus system will always grab the autofocus with the widest aperture of your lens. This means that if your lens has the widest aperture at f/5.6, but you have stopped down to f/8, your lens will grab focus at f/5.6, but use f/8 to make the photo.

• Shutter Speed: The duration for which the camera's shutter remains open, determining how long the sensor is exposed to light. Slower shutter speeds allow more light to reach the sensor but can also introduce motion blur if the subject is not perfectly still.

• ISO: The sensitivity of the camera’s sensor to light. A higher ISO increases the sensor’s sensitivity to the available light.

Noise in digital photography is directly linked to the exposure of an image. Our cameras record light, and light is information. Essentially, noise is the result of a lack of information captured by the camera’s sensor. In low-light scenarios, where there is inherently less light (and thus less information), noise becomes more pronounced. The key to reducing noise lies in mastering exposure.

Common Misconceptions About ISO and Noise

A prevalent misconception among photographers is that keeping ISO low is the only way to reduce noise. So they underexpose their images in an attempt to avoid noise, only to brighten them later in post-processing. This approach exacerbates the problem, as increasing exposure in post-production often introduces more noise than if a higher ISO had been used in the first place.

In digital photography, the sensor's job is to capture as much light as possible. The more light (or information) the sensor records, the higher the image quality and the lower the noise. When photographers underexpose an image because they are afraid of pushing their ISO, they reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor, leading to a lack of information. This is the primary cause of noise in low-light photography—the image was underexposed to begin with.

Instead of being afraid to increase ISO, photographers should focus on capturing as much light as possible by properly exposing the image in-camera. Modern cameras are incredibly capable, and most models released in the last decade can handle higher ISO settings with minimal noise. Understanding the limitations of your equipment and pushing ISO when necessary can lead to cleaner, more detailed images.

The Histogram: Your Essential Tool for Mastering Exposure

The histogram is one of the most valuable tools in a photographer’s arsenal, especially in low-light conditions. It provides a graphical representation of the tonal distribution in your image, allowing you to see whether your photograph is correctly exposed. If you’ve traveled with me on a workshop, then you’re likely heard me talk about histograms and their importance.

One of the best additions to our photography that mirrorless technology adds is the ability to see the histogram live in the viewfinder as you’re photographing. With mirrorless, you no longer must take photo, review it on the back of the camera, and then adjust and photograph again.

Since our histogram reads light and light is information recorded by your camera, you can easily see exactly where your exposure is in real-time. 50% of the information (light) your camera is capable of recording is in the last 20% of the far-right side of the histogram. Thus, if you are underexposing by one full stop, you are leaving as much as 50% of the information you could be recording off the table. When you’re exposing properly, you can reduce the exposure in post-processing without introducing noise because all the information your camera is capable of recording has been recorded.

But if you’ve underexposed the image, you’re leaving it up to your post-processing software, like Lightroom or DxO, to “guess” what information you didn’t record and fill in as best as possible. This is where a significant portion of noise is created.

The histogram displays the distribution of light in the image across 255 different tones, from black (on the left) to white (on the right). The shape of the histogram varies depending on the scene's lighting conditions and the exposure settings used. Contrary to popular belief, there is no "perfect" histogram shape, such as the bell curve. Instead, the goal is to achieve a histogram that is as far to the right as possible without clipping the highlights—this is known as "exposing to the right." By pushing the histogram to the right, you ensure that your camera is recording as much information as possible, which is crucial for low-light photography success.

When you underexpose an image, the histogram shifts to the left, and you lose valuable information, especially in the shadows. This loss of information leads to increased noise when you try to recover the shadows in post-processing. On the other hand, if you expose to the right, you capture more detail in the highlights and midtones, resulting in a cleaner image with less noise.

Practical Examples

To fully grasp the concepts discussed, let’s look at some practical examples you can think about next time you’re setting out in low light for your wildlife photography. With so many of our favorite subjects active during low light, it’s to your benefit, and the benefit of your images, to get comfortable pushing to the right and grabbing as much information with your camera as possible.

Below is a series of images that I created specifically to showcase the difference in noise when all other things (shutter speed and aperture) stay the same. For all of the images, I used a shutter speed of 1/1000 and the maximum aperture of my lens, f/2.8. While I feel comfortable hand-holding my lens as slow as a 1/400 shutter speed in this situation, this sow was fishing for salmon and could have erupted into the water at any moment. Keeping a bit higher of a shutter speed than I might otherwise use for this scenario meant I’d be able to react if and when any action broke out.

The only variable that changed is the ISO. I also used a 100% crop of the image to keep it at the same crop level that almost every publisher, contest, or printer uses for image viewing.

I work with a lot of wildlife photographers and from that time, I can anecdotally share that many are afraid of taking their ISO beyond 6400. The bottom line is that the light is the light – use as low an ISO as possible but as high as necessary.

In the image below, I’ve photographed this coastal brown bear at ISO 6400, the mythical breaking point for many in the wildlife photography community. Even at a first glance, it’s easily seen that this image is underexposed. Looking closely at the histogram, the last 20% of its entirety captured no data. As a result, stopping at ISO 6400 meant I left half the data my camera is capable recording on the cutting room floor.

I brought this image into Lightroom and brought the exposure up to where it needed to be, and you can see, I had to bump the exposure up by +1.7, and the noise left by the lack of information is apparent.

For the next image, I bumped the ISO to 8000, another “stretching it” ISO for most wildlife photographers. Look closely and you can see it is an improvement, but it still falls significantly short of the ISO needed to properly expose this photo. A snackable size of data made it into the far 20% of the histogram, but not enough to create the right exposure.

Let’s fast forward to an example where my ISO is finally at a point where I have “pushed to the right” and maximized the amount of light/information my camera can gather. For most photographers, bumping ISO up to 20,000 is unthinkable. Yet, raising my ISO to that level was exactly what the situation called for – again, as low as possible but as high as necessary.

Is there noise in this image? Certainly. When you are photographing at high ISO levels and in low light, you will see some noise. But noise is not the enemy that so many photographers think it is. No one is viewing our images by pixel-peeping just inches away from the photo, and no one is viewing our images at 400% to see exactly how noisy an image may be.

As a full-time wildlife photographer, much of my income is reliant on selling my photographs. Not once has a photo editor, gallery owner, art buyer, or creative director ever brought up the minimal noise in my photos, and my photos at ISO 20,000 and 25,600 are licensed every single month.

Using only some simple masking and adjusting in the noise reduction panel of Lightroom, along with a touch of sharpness, the noise that does exist is completely manageable. My general rule of thumb is that I spend no more than five minutes editing (or polishing up) my photographs. Getting it as right as possible in-camera, including a strong composition and a proper exposure shave off minutes and hours behind the camera “fixing” images.

As you can see from the final comparison of this photo below, two of the other major concerns with noise in an image—sharpness and detail—are virtually non-existent. Even straight-out-of-camera, the photograph maintains plenty of detail and sharpness.

For many people, “pushing to the right” takes some time and trial before it feels natural, but getting used to the way our new world of photographic technology works can yield incredibly rewarding results. Using the histogram to guide your exposure, and not shying away from high ISO, you can capture stunning, wall-worthy images in even the most difficult lighting conditions.

Remember, every bit of light that you capture is information, and every piece of information contributes to the quality of your final photograph. Embrace the challenges of low-light wildlife photography, push your personal ISO boundaries, and watch as your wildlife photography reaches new levels of excellence.