Light is needed for photography. Do you realize when you're out in sunlight and taking a photo of the kids running around, the pictures turn out pretty spectacular? Usually you don't get those wrong.

But indoors, the pictures can turn out pretty bad. With the lights dimmed and the birthday cake taken out, snapping a photo in those conditions will most likely result in a fuzzy and poor picture.

Low light photography can be a real challenge

The issue here is - too little light gets into the camera. What you need is more light - which is why the first thing we do is to activate the pop-up flash unit and zap! You get more light and clearer pictures.

But wait... with that flash going off, what you'll also see is that your subjects are lighted up very harshly. I always think that flash used full blown in low light ruins a picture because of its harshness.

So what do you do? Let's assume you want to avoid the jarring harshness of the flash and turn it off. How can you can more light into the camera to get better, clearer pictures? Not sure? Well, there is a way.. and it's called ISO.

Let's understand what ISO is. ISO is a measure of your digital camera's sensitivity to light. Back in the days of analogue 35mm cameras they had different films which had different light sensitivities. If you wanted a film that was more light sensitive, you literally had to switch out the camera film before your next shot.

Digital cameras overcome that. They allow you to just set the ISO as desired and are usually defined in the range of hundreds - 100, 500, 800, etc.

And here's the golden rule to remember. A high ISO setting in your camera allows more light to be captured on its sensors. This offers the low light problem you face. The downside to this is that you get increased image noise. So your pictures may turn out a bit grainy. A low ISO setting in your camera reduces the amount of light captured on the camera's sensors - but you get less digital noise appearing.

What does this mean for those taking photos in low light and not wanting to activate flash? Well, obviously - crank up the ISO to the maximum. You will get some digital noise coming into the picture - but nothing we can't deal with (see below).

In summary, to shoot better digital photos in low light conditions without using a flash, set the ISO setting to the maximum. Also, set your camera to Aperture Priority and set an f-stop that allows more light through (bigger aperture). It also helps to shoot in RAW mode so that you capture maximum detail in your digital shot (no compression in the captured image).

And here's a trick to remove that digital noise that accompanies high ISO shots - use a software program like Noise Ninja to remove it. Noise Ninja is very effective in combating image noise and I practically swear by it when I have high ISO pictures to process.

You already know it is tough to shoot good digital photos in low light conditions without a flash. The trick is really to get more light into the camera without using that harsh flash - and we can do that by cranking up the ISO and setting the camera to Aperture Priority.