Photography Tip #3

Tips for flash photography


Photo Credit: equinoxefr from Flickr

The onboard flash that comes on most cameras today is probably the most misunderstood and misused part of any camera. Do you ever wonder why your pictures that you take at night make it look like you are in a coal mine? The peoples faces are brightly lit and the background it completely black. Here are some tricks to eliminate the black hole look when there are no other ambient light sources to take advantage of.

Use a tripod
If you have a tripod available, you can use a preset on your camera called night portrait or night landscape depnding on what you are taking a picture of. This mode tells your camera to keep your shutter open longer which allows for more light to enter your camera. The downfall to this is that if you have shaky hands your pictures will turn out blurry. That is where the tripod becomes useful.

Back away from the subject
The intensity from the light of your flash decreases as the light travels further distances. If you are like me and need to know why this would make the background brighter in comparison to the subject you can google "inverse square law". This trick will only work if the background isnt a long distance away from the subject. In the example below the photo on the left was taken with the flash further away from the subject. The photo on the right was taken with the flash closer the the subject giving it the black hole look.


Photo Credit: Krypto from Flickr

Get an external flash unit
If your camera is equipped with a hotshoe, one of the best investments you can make for your camera is an external flash unit with a swivel head like the 430ex shown at the top of this post. The main advantage of an external speedlight besides the power of the flash is the ability to swivel and bounce the flash off different surfaces. If you have a white cieling you can bounce the flash off from it and it will create a much softer and more natural looking picture. See the image below for a comparison of direct flash and bounce flash.


Photo Credit: aho_1987 from Flickr


Use flash in bright sunlight outdoors
Sunny days can be one of the toughest times to get a good picture. People are squinting and the sun created harsh dark shadows under your eyes. If you can, try to find a spot in the shade to take the pictures but if that is not an option you will want to turn your flash on and use "fill flash". Unlike using flash in dark areas, you will want to be closer to the subject for the flash to fill in the shadows properly.


These tips are just scratching the surface of lighting with electronic flash. For a more complete guide on how to use your flash see this website. (link) it will tell you everything you need to know about flash photography.

Photography Tip #2

This tip is directed to those of you that are looking to buy a new digital camera soon. More people ask me what type of camera they should buy more than any other question so I thought it would be a good thing to cover in my blog.

First thing you need to do is decide what is more important to you, portability, quality, or a little bit of both. Point and shoot cameras are easy to pack up and carry around anywhere you are going while SLR cameras are a little more work to carry around but can make a huge difference in image quality when used in the right hands.
If you are going to be taking most of your pictures outdoors in bright conditions then a point and shoot should be able to fit most of your needs. If you are going to be indoors a lot in low light there are about a million reasons to go with a SLR. Well maybe not that many reasons but you get the point. Chances are that you probably already know if you want a SLR or a point and shoot so I wont waste any more time talking about that.

Point and Shoots:
The biggest misconception about any digital camera is that the more mega pixels you have, the better the image image quality will be. I'm most cases it is actually just the opposite, but explaining that could be an entire post of its own. In fact, if you only plan on printing 4x6 images from your photos, 2 mega pixels is more than enough to make a great print!
One of the main things you should look at is who the lens is made by. Canon, Nikon, and Carl Zeiss all make great quality optics and that is a key factor in image quality.
Personally I would recommend the Canon Powershot series or the G9 if you have a larger budget. All of those have manual modes that can be great for someone trying to learn more about photography but doesn't want to lug around a large SLR camera.
A lot of new cameras are also coming with image stabilization which can be great for those of you that get your pictures back only to find that they are all blurry.

SLR (Single Lens Reflex)
For SLR cameras all of the same tips from above can be applied. If you are looking to get into the world of SLR cameras then be prepared to spend more than you expected to. Most people will start with the camera and a kit lens and then they will realize that most kit lenses are worthless, only to discover that a good lens costs more than you paid for the camera body! Although a good quality camera body is important, it isn't nearly as important as the lens you put on it so make sure you plan that into your budget when shopping for a SLR camera. You will want to choose a system that has a wide variety of lenses available for it such as Nikon or Canon. If you are used to the zoom range of a point and shoot you will find that just because a lens is big doesn't mean it has a large zoom range. You will need to get at least 2-3 good quality lenses to cover the range that a normal point and shoot covers.
A great site to look at to see reviews on lenses and different quality ratings is http://www.slrgear.com . In addition to that link, a great site to look for ratings and comparisons between camera bodies is http://www.dpreview.com . If you are on a budget you should take a look at some of the Tamron lenses available for Canon. They are known to produce some great quality lenses at a great price.
The last bit of advice I can give is to look for deals on used equipment. Photographers like me are always upgrading their equipment so you can find some really great savings on places like craigslist and Ebay.

Photography Tip #1

This will be the first in my series of photography tips for beginners. I will try to add a new tip every month or so.

Rule of Thirds:

My first tip has to do with composition and your photos focal point. The rule of thirds has been a popular rule in photography for as long as people have been taking pictures. If you look at your LCD and divide the screen in 3 sections vertically and horizontally like a tic tac toe board, you would have 4 intersecting points on your screen. Try taking a picture of your Dog or loved one with their face dead center in the screen. Then take a picture with their face one one of those intersecting points. Make sure your background is interesting but there is nothing that is going to take away from the main focal point of the photo. This is a simple but effective trick that pros have been using for years to make pictures stand out above the rest.