In this episode I'll give you some tips for using your pop-up flash!
AdoramaTV presents, Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace.
Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of
Exploring Photography right here on AdoramaTV, brought you as always by
Adorama it's the camera store that has everything, in fact anything you see in
this video you can buy it at
Adorama.com so check them out. Well today we're going to be talking about this
little guy
it is the pop-up flash. Now a lot of cameras, in fact most cameras have this
little pop-up flash right here
and i've seen so many photographers beginning intermediate and advanced
photographers
try to do things with this little pop-up flash that it was never intended to be
used for,
so we're going to talk about two of the most common mistakes used with the pop-up flash
and I want to tell you about why it's on our flash really,
or on our camera, it's on our camera for two specific reasons
it's there so in really dark environments and we want to shoot things that are close up like
10 feet or closer maybe 15 feet things like wedding receptions out with friends
on vacation stuff like that when we shoot friends and family, this is sort of
a thing to illuminate our room or our subject, now if you want to get creative
and do some really nice
portraits or things like that you really need an off-camera flash
not the pop-up flash but this will get you by in a pinch
the other thing that this is used for is to fill
in light when we have a bright background or
something like that its called the fill flash now to help me explain all of this
I've asked Lex to join me, thank you for being here Lex
and we're going to show you a few things, in fact some of the things that we've shot for in
this video we shot at night
unfortunately we can't shoot video and stills at night because our video camera
doesn't have a light because we are traveling all over the world in fact right now are very
hot and slimy, not slimy but humid,
sweaty, hot and sweaty, how do you say the name of this town? Cairns.
Cairns Australia, I don't know, its very hot here
and so we're going to walk you through some of things, now before we get through,
go through all of that
I want to remind you that Adorama has fantastic photo contests
and what makes them so fantastic? Well first they're free to enter
and you can win some great prizes, so click the link and enter the contest today!
Well our pop-up flash, the main purpose is to
act as a fill flash and that's usually used
in bright sunlight now I know a lot of people aren't thinking of using a flash
in bright sunlight
but they can really help out, in fact Lex and I shot previously
a little demo right here where we're standing, in fact the sun was a little bit brighter
and you can see the difference between a pop-up flash on, or fill flash turned on
and a fill flash turned on let's take a look at that right now. Well here's an example
of when a fill flash is totally appropriate, we're going to have Lex, we're going to have you
look that way toward the sun,
so we've got pretty good light, but we've got some shadows on the side of her face but this
will give us some
options so we're going to take the first picture here is a nice close portrait
and you look great, it's pretty darn good actually
but I want to through on the pop-up flash, just so we can fill in some of those shadows
keep the exact same pose excellent. Alright now we can look at those side by
side and now we have some options with a load of shadow
or with some of those shadows eliminated with our fill flash
and you can see that the pop-up flash gives us lots of options to choose from
in post-production. Well the other thing that I want to talk about with the pop-up flash
are two common mistakes. Now the first mistake that a lot of people make
is when they have their camera on they don't realize
that this lens, when you're zooming in if you have an SLR
as interchangeable lenses we have a long lens like this, this flash is going to hit
the end of this lens, and you can see this is going to cast a shadow
at the bottom of our picture so if you're using a lens
like this, what you need to do is well you can't zoom all the way in you need to
zoom
out a little bit, and even if you're zoomed out the lens hood will also
cast a shadow so in some instances you need to take that off
but you're going to have this big shadow in the bottom of your picture, so just a note
this flash isn't tall enough to get over your lens
and what's the solution to that? Well you need an external speed light that goes on
the top of your camera, that will get up above
your lens so beware of that. The second
and this is something I see all over, we've traveled all over the world now
for over a year
and I've seen this in almost every city we've been in with photographers taking
pictures of things like
the bay or a city or at a sports stadium,
they'll turn on a pop-up flash and try to illuminate the impossible,
and what I mean by that is they are trying to illuminate something like a stadium,
I mean could you imagine having a little flashlight and trying to illuminate
something that is
you know half a mile away or something like an entire city,
it is just not going to happen, this is really made for things that are close up in
fact Lex and I went out again
last night and we shot some pictures and you can see here
I'm talking over this video as I'm shooting, and you can see the different
distances
and how Lex is illuminated, let's take a look at that. Lex and I went to a large
field in the center of town and you can see that we're shooting
and a 60th of a second at f/3.9 at ISO 200. I kept my ISO low
so you can really see effects of the flash and how it dies out very quickly.
You can see here that at about 6 feet that's where Lex is standing from the camera
she's illuminated just fine but notice how the light falls off really rapidly
on the ground and doesn't light up the background at
all, now when she steps back to about 13 feet
notice how much of the ground is now illuminated by the flash,
that's because the flash is now at max power, its giving
all it can give and Lex looks just fine but again the background is totally
dark. Now when Lex goes to about 16 feet
she's now under exposed, she's at the very edge of the flash,
as she moves back she just falls into darkness.
Now ideally for a scene like this we increase our
ISO significantly maybe even shoot at lower shutter speed so we went on the street
and we shot at a pool, now notice
I have increased my ISO to 800, again we're shooting a 60th the second at
f/3.9, this is not a flattering
photo what's happening here is the flash is trying to illuminate this entire
scene this entire pool, so it's actually really hard light
on Lex and she's a little overexposed and the background just doesn't look very good.
What we should do is shoot at a slower shutter speed
so that's what I did next I shot at a really slow shutter speed
1. 1/6th of a second, again f/3.9, ISO 800
notice the background is much more pleasing but now Lex is
underexposed, that's okay I can just turn on my pop-up flash
at a little fill and now we have a much more balanced
photo where we can see the background and Lex and everything looks nice and it's warmed up
because of the color temperature of our flash, that is the best way to shoot a scene
that is like this, a big open scene use a slower shutter speed, a higher ISO
and just use your pop-up flash to fill on your subject
we can go in here and take a look at these two pictures
side by side and you can see that the second photo is much more flattering
than the first photo. Now I have to be honest
on the second photo I used a specific
flash setting it was called the 'Slow Sync' on the Panasonic
FC1000, sometimes it's called 'Rear Curtain Sync'
on other flashes but it allows you to shoot at a slower shutter speed
and the camera knows just to do a small burst of light
to fill in your subject without over exposing
whatever you're shooting and you get a much more pleasing image that way.
Well there you have it, great uses for the pop-up flash remember
it's made to
act as a fill flash, its made to shoot things that are close
but is not going to illuminate a city or a port or things like that and if you
have a lens hood on make sure you take that off
so you don't get big shadows and if you have a longer lens you're
going to have to have an external speedlite or else you're going to have
a big shadow in your photos. Well thank you so much for joining us for this
episode of
Exploring Photography remember there are a million episodes, not a million but there are
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