Taking photos in low light settings is tough, especially when you want to capture the glow and warmth of candlelight. In a previous post, I talked about using aperture priority to let you control the amount of light entering the camera so you can capture some great photos of holiday lights. You can use those same settings here if you wish; put the camera in aperture priority and open it as far as you can. Then set your ISO higher to increase the sensitivity to keep the shutter as fast as possible. Or you can try these steps that I did in full manual mode. Here are a few quick tips.

Set the white balance to Tungsten.
Candles are fairly similar on the color temperature scale to incandescent lights, so this will give you the “warm” feel from the light in the photo. Also make sure to turn off the flash.

Open up the aperture as wide as you can.
This will allow more light to enter the camera, but will also make the light soft. I set my aperture at the widest I could at an f/2.8.I also set my ISO on 800 to increase the sensitivity, although you can go higher if you want. Just be mindful that background noise increases as you go higher on your ISO.

Set the speed for 1/10 of a second or slightly faster.
The intent is to capture the picture fast without getting any hand shake on the camera and blurring the image. These photos were taken without the use of a tripod, if I had a longer time on my shutter speed, the image would blur.

I used a Nikon D60 to capture these shots. I coupled it with a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. Read Zak’s blog post on this excellent lens. If you have a kit lens, you can use some of these same settings, but you may want to use a tripod to get the best possible image.

Final thought: remember to disable the flash!
The two pictures below were shot with identical settings, except that the automatic flash was left on for the bottom shot. Notice how the flash washes out the warmth of the foreground objects, destroying the mood of the picture.