Archive for July, 2011
Take much better pictures with your camera: Move and soften that flash!
Thursday, July 28th, 2011
For a doctor, the first rule is, “Do No Harm.” The first rule for better photography should be, “Take the flash unit off your camera (if possible)!” Why? Well, it is an unflattering lighting source, for one. It is a bright direct light source like the sun. It produces harsh shadows and high-contrast conditions for your subject. You won’t see any of that in well-done professional commercial images, unless that is the specific intent . Just look at beautiful models on magazine covers, or products in a name brand ad. Remember when someone was telling ghost stories and held a flashlight under their face? It threw the harsh shadows upward and gave the story-teller a scary look. Normally, on-camera flashes throw harsh shadows downward on a horizontal image, and to the left or right on a vertical image. A lot of good wedding and portrait photographers use accessory flash units very similar to the one you might use on your camera, but they mount them off the camera. A lot of these photographers are able to hand-hold their units by mounting the flash to a bracket which moves the flash way above and centered over the lens axis to allow the shadows to drop down behind the subject so they are not noticeable in the images. When they want to take a vertical shot, the bracket allows the strobe to still stay positioned at center and over the lens axis so the shadows drop down behind the subject. This approach also reduces the chance for “red-eye,” (the glowing red marbles) as well. Another trick is bouncing the light off a diffuser card (attached to a number of modern flash units), or through specific attachments, or putting tissue paper or some other white translucent material over the strobe to mitigate the harsh shadows.
If you don’t want or can’t afford a flash bracket, some DSLR cameras allow wifi remote control of a dedicated flash so you can hold the flash above the camera, or most of these cameras have accessory wires available so you can hold the flash sufficiently above the lens to get the same effect.
A lot of people use point and shoot cameras. They can’t remove the flash unit, but they can usually turn it off. It will require the photographer to utilize a tripod or other support for the camera and shoot with available light. Many of these cameras have different modes or manual controls to allow slower shutter speeds so ambient light can be used instead of that bright, unflattering strobe light.
Try these things, and your images will definitely start to look better.
-Gary Silverstein
