How to take photos in the Sistine Chapel

While you visit the Vatican Museums you can take pictures everywhere, except for the Sistine Chapel, where we find the most interesting attractions of the museums, the frescoes painted by Michelangelo, such as the famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgement.

As you enter the room, everybody starts taking pictures and the guards start yelling: No pictures! No photos!

As you will notice quite easily, they are pretty serious about it.

To take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel, you need a little bit of tactics, attention, speed and a decent camera with a good lens, because there isn’t much light in there. Therefore, when you approach the room, make sure your camera is ready. This means that you have to set your camera settings before you get there. Select the lowest diafragm for the lens (2.8, 1.4, what your lens supports), place the ISO at 1000 or 1600 and even if the guards start yelling at you, as soon as you enter, place yourself at the center of the room, take a silly face and shoot as much as you can. When the guards reach you, take an innocent face and say you’re sorry.

Then, wait for the next group of tourists to enter the room and in the noise created by the guards who jump at the new victims, try to take as many photos as possible. After a few waves of tourists, you should have enough photos of the Sistine Chapel.

Some photos won’t be great:

In case you exit the chapel and you are not very happy with the photos, go back and start all over again. Don’t forget you don’t go every day to the Sistine Chapel, in front of Michelangelo’s best works.