A tripod can be a light too

When photographing non-moving objects, sometimes your best option is to use a tripod rather than trying to light the scene.


The first image is handheld in an extremely dark room, the undersea exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.



The second image is taken with an aperture setting of 2.8. This was to allow more light in. However, this did not give as much depth of field as I would have liked for an object this big. The camera was placed on a railing.


Moving to f8 required an 8 second exposure. However, it is extremely sharp. The people in the background are quite blurred. In fact, a better option would have been to go to an even longer exposure, and the people in the background that move will more or less disappear as they pass through the frame too fast.