Take sharp photos in low-light conditions

1 In the menu

On your Nikon hit the Menu button, then: Custom Settings Menu>Built-in AF-assist illuminator and turn it on. Ensure the AF switch is set to AF on your lens and camera body. Now half-press the shutter button to focus and see the illuminator light up.

3 Remove your lens hood

In order for the illuminator to effectively work it needs to strike your subject without obstruction. So make sure your hands don’t get in the way, and remove the lens hood, if you have one. It will also only work through the viewfinder, so don’t engage Live View.

5 Auto-area AF

If you’re wondering why your illuminator still isn’t working, it could be because Auto-area AF has to be chosen for the AF-area mode. With the AF button depressed, scroll through with your command dial until you reach AF-A.

2 Get close

The AF-assist illuminator has a range of around 0.5-3.0m (1ft 8in-9ft) so ensure you’re within range of your subject for it to work. This means it won’t be useful for distant landscapes in low-light conditions, but will work on close-up flowers, people and other subjects.

4 AF mode

This works when the focusing system is in AF-S (Singleservo AF) mode. It can work in AF-A (Auto-servo AF) mode if Single-servo AF is selected when shooting (see tip). To check, hit the AF button on the camera and use the sub-command dial to scroll through AF options.

6 Settings

Our final settings were an aperture of f/2.8 to minimize the exposure time when shooting in low-light conditions, 1/200 sec shutter speed to avoid camera shake while shooting handheld and ISO100 to reduce any excessive noise that might creep into the image.