Take Better Low Light Photos with a Lightscoop

I’m not a professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination. I love taking pictures of my family, though, and use my camera (a Nikon D5100) to take most of our family photos and a lot of the photos I use on this blog. It’s important to me that my photos look good, even if they aren’t professional quality and even if I’m not the most knowledgeable photographer in the world.

One of the best tools in my mom-with-a-camera toolbox is my Lightscoop. A Lightscoop is an attachment for your camera that diffuses the light from the flash so that the lighting in your pictures is less harsh and you get a softer, but still sharp and well-lit image.

To demonstrate, here is a photo without flash. It was taken in the corner of our dining room where there isn’t a ton of natural light. Even with a lens that works well in low light conditions (Nikon 35mm f/1.8G here), the image is still blurry and out of focus.

Here is a photo taken with the same lighting using the camera’s regular flash. The light from the flash is harsh and flattening and washes out the image. Everything is in focus, but it doesn’t look very natural, and it’s impossible to edit out the ugly flash.

This photo was taken just a few seconds after the one above, but using the Lightscoop to diffuse the flash. I haven’t done anything with this photo other than resize it. The image is crisp and well-lit, but the lighting looks much softer and more natural, and nothing is washed out.

You can see why I love my Lightscoop. In addition to the improved image quality:

• You can get it for under $30.
• It’s light-weight, easy to attach, and easy to store. I just tuck it in my camera bag with my camera. It takes up very little room.
• It’s an easy solution when you’re chasing around a busy baby or small child, you don’t want to fool around with a lot of settings, and just want to be able to point and shoot. I can’t chase my daughter around with a full light kit.
• It works fairly well both indoors and outdoors.

I highly recommend a Lightscoop if you’ve been avoiding indoor and other low light settings for your photos or if you’re tired of your pictures in low light settings being washed out by your camera’s flash.