There will be times when you're going to take a photograph and they're perhaps in
low-light.
You'll press the button on your camera, and the little flash will pop up all on it's own.
That's an indication that the camera thinks
it has to use flash generally speaking it's right there are occasions when it
doesn't actually need too and there are other ways around it
but for the moment let's assume that when the flash pops up you need to use
flash.
Now when you go to take a picture with your little
automated flash on the top of the camera it'll do the job, it'll get you
a photograph it may not be
the most amazing picture but it will get you a a picture of sorts,
because it's a very very tiny light source
like from it will be very hrsh and very direct
and that's not necessarily the best light for taking a picture in.
so the next thing you can do about that would be to get yourself a dedicated
flashgun
now dedicated flash gun isn't actually part of the camera, it's something
which you fit onto the top like that. It's called dedicated because the flash gun
and the camera will speak to each other but it has to be the right flashgun for
your camera
for example it be no good putting a a Sony flashgun onto a Pentax camera
because they'd just get into a huph and woldn't speak to eachother.
The great thing with a dedicated flashgun
is that ot's a slightly larger light source, so the light will be a
slight, will be a little bit nicer in your picture, also
you can see the distance between the lens and the light source
is much greater than with your little on camera one which won't pop up at the
moment. That's gonna have an impact on red eye,
red eye is caught from the flash bouncing of the blood vessels
in the back of your eye
or your subjects eye, and coming straight up the lens. Beacuse
the flashlight is higher the light will probably bounce back
but it'll come under the camera therefore you wont get the red eye.
The best thing about it of all is that you can
swivel the head around, you can turn this about, you can really start to take
control
of what the lights doing. You could also fit a diffuser to it.
That fits on the front there, and that kind of bashes the light around and softens it.
There is one other possible solution,
if you feel like investing in one, a hammer head flash gun.
These are really really great, they fit on a bracket and it goes on the bottom of
the camera like that.
That's quite a big chunky thing, but these are very very powerful,
you have an even larger light source on the top here
it too can be bounced around all over the place,
but even better with the press of a button you can just take it off the
bracket and you can kinda
move it around and bounce light of walls and you can point it where
you want it to go.
what do I mean by bouncing light
and the characteristics of light as well? such as harsh light, or soft light.
what's that all about let's go have a look, let's see if i can show you.
I like to use the analogy of water for light, because it's a far more visual
medium, you can see what i'm on about.
Imagine that is your flashgun, if you fire
a blast of directional flash straight at someone, you have a kind of rod of light,
a bit like this. Now that's pretty harsh, it's all going one way, and it's
kinda like a wash, a bam of light straight into somebody.
let me show you what I mean, Lorna can I just borrow you for a moment.
Now, go back towards the path just a bit, maybe that way,
just a tad, that's it, perfect.
If I was gonna take a photograph of Lorna, and give her a blast of direct flash
it's obviouslt not gonna be particualrly pleasant.
Right, it's all coming in one direction
and it's not very nice when you get a blast full-on of water
that's where you're going to get burned highlights and black backgrounds, it's
not a nice kind of a light at all.
your second option would be to add a diffuser to your flash,
pop something over the front. Something that's just gonna kind of
shatter that direction shaft of light
Now as you can see that is a much
much softer, much much nicer kind of gentler light to be photographing someone with,
but possibly the best of the lot, would be to use
a direct jet of light of water
but bounce it of something, if I bounced the light by turning the flash
head
towards the wall like this,
can you see that lovely kind of soft little droplets of light, they just
kinda wrapping themselves around Lorna,
and that's gonna give you some of the nicer light possible to shoot a picture.
You could do the same with the sealing, you could fire it straight of the sealing
but watch out because whatever colour your walls or sealing is
it will also pick that up too in the light.
when you're pondering what on earth you're gonna do with your flash and you're trying
to remember
bouncing it up and bouncing it off the walls and diffusers
try and think of Lorna and her sacrifice here, I think she's done
extraordinarily well
perhaps we should raise a glass to her next time you're in the pub.
cow.