Tips to take great flash photos
Most purists prefer to avoid flash photography. There are a few practical reasons for this. Unlike ‘available light’ photography, the flashlight causes shadows, red eye and dark backgrounds. The face of the subject might appear flat and the flashlight washes out most of the subtle details on the face.
At the same time, it’s difficult to avoid using the flashlight in many of the situations we encounter – especially during night and indoor photo-shoots, where the available light is low. But, taking good photos while using a flashlight is not impossible. Read on to understand how.
Avoiding unnecessary shadows
Direct flashlight washes out subtle details on the face of the subject and it might cause shadows that we don’t want. One way to avoid this problem is bouncing the light. If the colour of the wall or ceiling in the room is white or close to white, point the flash unit towards it and bounce the light off those surfaces. The light that falls on the subject would be relatively soft; resulting in an image with lesser shadow and more details.
If there is no white wall or ceiling, use a large white paper or thermocol as a reflector and seek someone’s help to hold the reflector in place. Bouncing light off a wall or reflector placed diagonally behind you is also a good way of bouncing the light.
Using this technique the photos we get would be more natural and the shadows would be diffused. This would also help you to get more saturated colours, as compared to photos taken with direct flashlight.
There are however chances having shadows below the jaw-line and one side of the face, depending on the angle of reflection. To get the right effect, different angles to bounce the light should be tried out.
It’s also better to switch the camera into manual mode to avoid the TTL (Through The Lens) light metering affecting the intensity of the flashlight discharged - this enables the flash to fire the maximum light.
Lighting up the background properly
Lighting up the background is a challenge when you use flashlight as the main light source for the foreground, i.e. subject. But there are a couple of methods to reduce this problem. Even if the subject is lit up by direct flashlight or bounced flashlight, if some natural light is available in the background, you can achieve a bright background with a simple technique.
In flashlight photography, we normally set the shutter speed to flash synchronisation, also known as flash sync – the maximum shutter speed a user can set for photography under flashlight. To perform the above-mentioned technique, you need to set the iris for flash light and lower the shutter speed to get proper exposure for the background – one or two stops under exposure is also okay.
You can also use the camera’s metering system to get an idea about the background light and lower the shutter-speed accordingly. You can use a shutter speed of maximum 30 for handheld photography – that too if you have a steady hand. You can make necessary adjustments in the ASA settings to get a manageable shutter speed.
Another way to light up the background is using one or more slave flash units – independent flash units that get triggered by the lighting of another flashlight. In this technique, you need to have one flash unit as the triggering flash – photographers prefer using the flash unit that is attached to the camera as triggering flash. You can use slave flashes to light up one or more places in the background as well as the foreground.
Avoiding red eye
Red eye occurs when the flashlight gets reflected off the blood vessels of a person’s retina (of the eye). If the flashbulb in the camera is placed very close to the lens, the chance of the resulting photograph having red eye is very high. So try avoiding the built in flash of your DSLR camera and use external flash for flashlight photography.
Red eyes can also be easily removed from digital photos using an image-editing tool like Photoshop.
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