The low $p_T$ direct photon production from a variety of the hadronic sources is studied within the microscopic HSD transport approach for p+C, p+Pb and Pb+Pb collisions at 160 A GeV. The direct photon emission from elementary hadronic scatterings as well as meson-meson bremsstrahlung are incorporated. The influence of in-medium effects such as a collisional broadening of the vector-meson spectral functions on the photon emission rate is found to be hardly observable in the final spectra which are dominated by bremsstrahlung type processes. The uncertainties in the subtraction of the 'background' from the photon decay of hadronic resonances inside the hot and dense fireball is investigated, additionally. Our findings are relevant for the interpretation and extraction of experimental data on direct photon production at low $p_T$.