A lot of times, people use their on camera flash for the wrong reasons. I'm talking about a flash on an SLR that's an attachment. I'm talking about the flash that comes with your camera called the "on camera flash".
As with the previous lesson on lighting on when to use flash. Here, I'm going to show you how to use flash.
Look at this photo, I didn't use a flash on this photo.
There is a strong backlight from the setting sun and it makes the background have an even lighting, but the tree itself is dark because of the backlight. Backlight basically happens when the light at the back (behind) the subject casts a shadow and makes the subject dark.
Now, if you're happy with this photo, you can leave it at that. But I would like the tree to be a bit brighter.
To do that, I used my on camera flash and this is the result.
As you can see, the tree is now brighter, but the background suddenly became dark. Even the sky is dark. This is because when you use the on camera flash, the shutter speed on my camera defaults to 1/60. Since this shutter speed is too fast to capture the low light from the setting sun, it didn't have enough time to expose the background properly.
Also, since the flash can only go to around 10 to 15 feet, it can expose the tree properly, but it's not powerful enough to light the background. No flash can unless you several flashes you use as they do in professional photography. But we're not gonna go there as this is more on teaching you how to use your point and shoot camera.
Here's another photo where I put arrows on the picture to show you what I mean.
The arrow on top shows the dark background, the arrow pointing at the tree shows it to be lighter than the first photo with no flash.
So the question is, how do you make the background and the tree have an even light? On your camera, there is a setting called "slow synchro" or "rear curtain" on your flash settings. Read you manual on how to set this.
Basically, what happens is this. When you just use the normal setting for flash, the shutter and the flash goes at the same time. When the shutter opens, the flash fires.
On slow synchro setting, the shutter opens first but the flash doesn't fire. Just before the shutter closes, the flash fires. This happens so fast that you won't notice it unless you know the technical details of it. To illustrate, let's use the example of a time of 1 second break down 1 second into 1/10th of a second increments to keep the math simple.
On normal flash setting, when the shutter opens at time 1/1o, the flash fires through around 2/10th to 3/10th of a second and the shutter closes at 5/10th of a second or at 1 second.
When using slow synchro flash, the shutter opens at time 1/10, but the flash doens't fire. Then at around 6/10th or 8/10th of a second, the flash then fires before the shutter closes at 10/10th or at 1 second.
The difference in time of the two is because when you're using normal flash, the shutter doesn't need to open very long since the flash provides enough light to capture the subject.
So what is the difference with this? With the slow synchro flash, the shutter is open longer to have enough time to capture the light of the overall scene. The flash then fires and lights up the foreground. This eliminates the darker foreground as seen on the first photo.
So what does using slow synchro flash looks like? Here's a photo with the same tree.
As you can see from this photo, the background is pretty much the same as the first photo except the tree is now brighter and almost has the same exposure as the background. The sky is also brighter and in fact, over exposed. But that is expected from a strong backlight and unless I have an SLR camera or a compact camera that has manual controls, there's not much I can do about it.
Here's another photo with arrows to point you to what I'm talking about.
Now this is a more even picture and it would look better when we're talking about people instead of a tree. I'll show you some samples on my next post.
As with the previous lesson on lighting on when to use flash. Here, I'm going to show you how to use flash.
Look at this photo, I didn't use a flash on this photo.
There is a strong backlight from the setting sun and it makes the background have an even lighting, but the tree itself is dark because of the backlight. Backlight basically happens when the light at the back (behind) the subject casts a shadow and makes the subject dark.Now, if you're happy with this photo, you can leave it at that. But I would like the tree to be a bit brighter.
To do that, I used my on camera flash and this is the result.
As you can see, the tree is now brighter, but the background suddenly became dark. Even the sky is dark. This is because when you use the on camera flash, the shutter speed on my camera defaults to 1/60. Since this shutter speed is too fast to capture the low light from the setting sun, it didn't have enough time to expose the background properly.Also, since the flash can only go to around 10 to 15 feet, it can expose the tree properly, but it's not powerful enough to light the background. No flash can unless you several flashes you use as they do in professional photography. But we're not gonna go there as this is more on teaching you how to use your point and shoot camera.
Here's another photo where I put arrows on the picture to show you what I mean.
The arrow on top shows the dark background, the arrow pointing at the tree shows it to be lighter than the first photo with no flash.So the question is, how do you make the background and the tree have an even light? On your camera, there is a setting called "slow synchro" or "rear curtain" on your flash settings. Read you manual on how to set this.
Basically, what happens is this. When you just use the normal setting for flash, the shutter and the flash goes at the same time. When the shutter opens, the flash fires.
On slow synchro setting, the shutter opens first but the flash doesn't fire. Just before the shutter closes, the flash fires. This happens so fast that you won't notice it unless you know the technical details of it. To illustrate, let's use the example of a time of 1 second break down 1 second into 1/10th of a second increments to keep the math simple.
On normal flash setting, when the shutter opens at time 1/1o, the flash fires through around 2/10th to 3/10th of a second and the shutter closes at 5/10th of a second or at 1 second.
When using slow synchro flash, the shutter opens at time 1/10, but the flash doens't fire. Then at around 6/10th or 8/10th of a second, the flash then fires before the shutter closes at 10/10th or at 1 second.
The difference in time of the two is because when you're using normal flash, the shutter doesn't need to open very long since the flash provides enough light to capture the subject.
So what is the difference with this? With the slow synchro flash, the shutter is open longer to have enough time to capture the light of the overall scene. The flash then fires and lights up the foreground. This eliminates the darker foreground as seen on the first photo.
So what does using slow synchro flash looks like? Here's a photo with the same tree.
As you can see from this photo, the background is pretty much the same as the first photo except the tree is now brighter and almost has the same exposure as the background. The sky is also brighter and in fact, over exposed. But that is expected from a strong backlight and unless I have an SLR camera or a compact camera that has manual controls, there's not much I can do about it.Here's another photo with arrows to point you to what I'm talking about.
Now this is a more even picture and it would look better when we're talking about people instead of a tree. I'll show you some samples on my next post.
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