FLASH
PHOTOS
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Using Flash: For some reason, flash photography is a
topic that many people are deathly afraid of and many others do not fully
understand. Flash units are tools that have been made to assist us in our
picture taking and improve our photography. I am going to discuss flash
photography in a manner that, I hope, is easy to understand and should take
some of the fear out of using that "F" word. I will also cover
several ways to use your flash to achieve better results. When
most of us think about using a flash, we think of low light scenes such as
indoors or outside at night. Granted, a flash is important in these
situations. But it will improve your photographs in many other
situations. Let's start at the beginning and talk about "direct
flash". Direct Flash: Direct
flash is what most people are most familiar with. This is when the flash unit
emits its burst of light directly at the subject. This is common to all
cameras that have a built-in flash unit. For
many years, flash attachments were designed as a direct flash (many less
expensive units are still designed this way today). The characteristics of
direct flash are easy to recognize. Images will normally have harsh shadows
directly behind the subject. The photos will also have little depth to them.
Many photographs of people made with direct flash will have a problem with
"red-eye". Also if you have reflective surfaces behind your
subject, such as mirrors, frames, or glass, you will have a "hot
spot" where the light is reflected off of the surface. Some
of these problems can be resolved with relative ease. Moving your subject
away from the background, or raising the flash and angling it to drop the
shadow down behind your subject, can allow you to loose the shadow. Angling the
flash will also help prevent the flash from reflecting off of mirrors and
glass. The
biggest advantage of the direct flash is it can reach longer distances than
any other methods of flash photography. Fill Flash: Whenever I tell people to use their flash
outside on a bright day to improve their photographs, they look at me as if I
were out of my mind. The midday sun is a very harsh light source and creates
pictures that have high contrast. Highlights will be vivid and the shadows
are usually deep. The brightness range from the highlights to the deep
shadows will usually exceed what the film can capture. If you expose for the
highlights, you will loose your shadow detail. If you expose for the shadow detail,
you will blow out your highlights. Fill
flash is used to add illumination to your foreground to help balance the
light levels of your subject and the shadow areas so the film can
capture both. Fill flash can also be used to brighten your subject when
being lit from behind (backlight). Bounce
Flash: The best way to
avoid the problems of direct flash is to use a bounce flash. Bounce flashes
are flash units that have the ability to angle the flash head in order to
reflect the light off of a ceiling or reflector connected to the flash unit.
This technique will give you a soft diffused light that is very flattering
for portraits. Bounce will also prevent you from having "red-eye"
and eliminates harsh reflections from mirrors and glass because the light is
not being reflected directly back at the camera. There
are a couple of things to keep in mind when using this method of flash
photography. First is that you will have to "pre-visualize" the
angle of the light. Light will reflect at the same angle it is transmitted,
so you will have to look at where the light will hit the ceiling and follow
the same angle to your subject. This doesn't have to be exact, but you want
to make sure the light doesn't drop down too far in front of or behind your
subject. The
other important thing to remember is when bouncing off of a ceiling, you will loose some of the light being reflected.
The typical amount of light being lost is about two stops. If you're using a
dedicated flash on a camera with Through-The-Lens (TTL) metering, the camera
will take care of the correction for you. If you're using a manual flash, you
will have to open your aperture by the two stops to compensate for the light
loss. If you're using a bounce attachment that attaches to your flash, read
the documents that came with it for the correct exposure adjustment.
Again, with a TTL set-up, the camera will make the correct adjustment for
you. This is all easier than it sounds once you try it. Source of information -
from articles from the PSA Journal (Photographic Society of |