Learn to Control your Flash for Better Pictures!

Flash is great! If things get too dark, flash will provide light and let you get the picture. And cameras are so smart that they will automatically use the flash when it thinks its needed. But as with anything automatic, it works, but isn't always the optimal solution.

If you learn how (and when) to override when your camera uses flash, you will have more creative control over how your pictures turn out and in many cases get pictures that are better than if you let your camera decide when to use the flash itself.

Case 1: Using Flash on Bright Sunny Days
Now, you don't need flash on bright sunny days, technically. But there are a couple of times when forcing your camera to use flash will get you better pictures. A) When you are taking a picture of someone, and their face is in the shadows. Using flash here will brighten up their face. B) Even if your subject is in full light, sometimes forcing your camera to use flash will brighten and saturate colours, making the photo much more impactful.

Photo taken on Bright Sunny Day -- No Flash
Here, I asked Helen to take a picture of me and Emma and just let the camera decide whether to use the flash or not. Technically the picture turned out. You can make out both mine and Emma's face, but check out the next photo!

Photo taken on Bright Sunny Day -- Flash
Here, I asked Helen to "force" the camera to use flash. Check out how the flash brightens up the colours (of anything close enough for it to light up) and brighten up our faces out of the shadows. Now the flash isn't strong enough to brighten up things in the background, but this, in a way, helps to make your subject stand out from the background!






Case 2: Not using Flash in low-light
And when you're taking a picture in low-light, your camera is going to want to use flash. But letting your camera use flash in some of these cases will obliterate the mood of the shot. For instance, I could have let my camera use flash while I took this picture of my daughter making her Birthday wish, but forcing the camera not to use flash and taking the picture by nothing but the light of the candle preserved the atmospheric feel of the picture. [Now, taking pictures in low-light situations is not always easy. I'll probably write something up next week about this, and link it here.]

Forcing the camera "not" to use Flash
Here, I manually disabled flash on my camera to take this shot. Sure, if I had let the camera use flash, I would of had a brightly lit capture, but I would have lost the atmosphere of the dark room lit only by candle light. Now, not all shots like this turn out, but its a fun challenge to try to capture low-light scenes like these and a real treat when they turn out.






Case 3: Using available (directional) lighting
The other thing about using flash (especially if you are using the built-in flash on your camera, or an external flash attached to your camera) is that . . . A) The light is always coming from the same position, so your pictures end up looking the same after a while, and B) The flash ends up lighting up both sides of people's faces evenly, so the faces end up looking wide. Where as having direction light, that is light from one side, lights one side of the face more than the other, making people's faces look a little more slim. [Now, if you get an external flash and use it off camera, then you can use flash, but get directional lighting. I'll probably write something up eventually about this, and link it here.]


How to do it!
Now, most cameras have different flash modes that you can choose from. They are usually as follows . . .

1) Auto - Which lets the camera choose when to use flash or not.
2) Force Flash On - Which forces the flash to fire when taking a picture. This is useful to make it fire on bright days when you want to use the flash to fill in shadows or make colours really pop-out!
3) Force Flash Off - Which forces the flash not to fire, even if you are taking a picture in a low-light situation, such as when you want to take a picture by candle light, a window or if you are not allowed to use flash.

And many cameras also have additional flash modes such as . . .

4) Red eye reduction - Which fires a pre-flash in order to shrink people's pupils down so to reduce "red-eye" in the final picture, although sometimes you want to turn this off if you have a "blinker" (A person or pet that blinks their eyes whenever there is a pre-flash.)
5) Slow Shutter Flash - Which leaves the shutter open a little longer so that when you take pictures in a dark room or outdoors, instead of just getting your subject and foreground lit up, it will try to capture the background which is often much more dimly lit.

Now, what you need to do is learn how to force your camera to use or not use flash when you decide to. Read your manual and learn how to do this. It may mean taking your camera off the fully auto "green" mode, and using a less intelligent "program" mode such as "P", "Av" or "Tv" mode.

Links
Here are some useful links on the subject.
1) KenRockwell - Fill Flash -- What Ken Rockwell has to say about Fill Flash. [ http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/fill-flash.htm ]
2) Kodak - Flash, Fill Flash and Flash Off -- Kodak's quick and concise guide on the subject. [ http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=38/13915/39/6370/421&pq-locale=en_US ]

Take care,
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com

Picasa - Google's FREE photo editing software

Picasa, Google's FREE photo editing software, is a great way to help you organize your photos, fix them up (if they need slight tweaks here and there) and edit them to get them ready for print. And since it's FREE, even if you have another photo editor software, it still makes sense to download Picasa anyway!

Download it at www.google.com/picasa !

Picasa the Photo Organizer
One of the great things about Picasa is that it's also a photo organizer. When you run Picasa for the first time, it will actually look through your computer and find all your photos. It then allows you to browse through the photos either by folder / location, by date -- or by person!

Picasa has face recognition built-in so that it organizes your pictures by "who" is in them as well. There's also a cool "face movie" feature that makes a movie of all the pictures of one person, with each picture slowly appearing, but super imposed so that that person's face lines up with each picture. It's so cool! Ok. It's hard to explain, just go check it out.

Picasa the Photo Saver
Although Picasa lacks pixel level editing (like Adobe's Photoshop), it has a menu of common "tuning" controls that let you lighten up the picture, lighten up just the highlights, darken the shadows and change the colour temperature (which I find really comes in handy.) And there are various "effects" that let you convert your picture to black and white, sepia, tint, etc. And one of my favourites is the "sharpen" effect that actually lets you make pictures seem a little sharper.

Picasa the Photo Editor
Now, Picasa itself doesn't have pixel level editing, so you can't move things around in the picture, or add text or things like that. But Picasa now has a built-in button to be able to edit your pictures through http://www.picnik.com/. PicNik expands what you can do through Picasa to do things like . . .

• Convert your picture to black and white, sepia, tint, invert, duo-tone
• Give your pictures a stylized look by applying different filters or actions such as soften, vignette, infrared film, lomo-ish, holga-ish, cross process, etc.
• Add text (and there are a lot of fonts to choose from)
• Apply "digital" stickers
• Touch-up your pictures with Blemish fix, shine-be-gone, airbrush, wrinkle remover, sunless tan, dodging, burning, clone, etc.
• Add a frame

Picasa the Collage Maker
Another really neat feature of Picasa is the ability to make photo collages. Pick a bunch of photos that you want to print out on a single sheet. Select one of Picasa's Collage templates and Picasa will automatically place your photo in the collage. Don't like the layout? Then swap pictures around until you are happy.
Picasa the Movie Maker
And Picasa can make a movie / slide show from pictures that you pick. And it does it in Picasa-easy fashion as well.

Go ahead! Download Picasa and have some fun!

Take care,
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com

Secrets to taking great Close-up shots!

Want to take a great portrait shot that everyone will think is amazing, but really didn't take that much effort? Then try taking a "close-up" shot! By taking a head and shoulders shot, you can get a great picture without having to fiddle so much dealing with posing and background.

Here are the secrets of why it works, and the tips-and-tricks to make it even better.

Secrets
1) Fill the picture with just Head and Shoulders -- Focusing in on your subject's face (and a bit of their shoulders) really makes for a bold and dynamic picture. Something that can really breakthrough the sea of regular snapshots!
2) Eliminate distracting background -- By filling the picture with mostly the person's head and shoulders, you are getting get rid of any distracting background, allowing your viewer to concentrate on the portrait.
3) Eliminate arms and hands -- It can be difficult to get your subject to move their arms and hands in a "natural" looking position, so by cropping them out of the picture you don't have to worry about them!

Tips-and-Tricks
1) Back up about 7-10 feet and zoom in on your subject using your camera's Telephoto position on the lens. -- When you take a picture at longer focal lengths (ie. "telephoto" position), rather than shorter focal lengths (ie. the "wide-angle" position), the lens takes a more flattering picture. When you take a close-up picture at the wide-angle setting, it tends to make people's faces look fatter. When you take a close-up picture at the telephoto setting, it makes faces narrower and appear more natural and pleasing.
2) Move your subject away from distracting background -- The other thing about taking a picture at longer focal lengths (ie. "Telephoto" position) is that it has a better chance of throwing any distracting background out of focus better, again focusing your viewer's attention on your subject. To make this even better, move your subject away from the background (ie. wall, tree, or anything else behind them.). And if your camera has the option to change the aperture setting, then try to use a low setting.
3) Turn off your flash and get some natural side lighting, such as from a window -- If at all possible, try to take the picture without using your flash. If there is a window providing lots of light, position your subject to one side. Or if there is a lamp, re-position it to provide some direction light on one side of your subject's face. This directional light ends up lighting only one side of a persons face, making the dimensional rendering much more impactful and because only half the person's face is lit up, their face may seem more slim.
4) Pick a North Facing Window with Sheer Drapes -- Also, if you decide to use window light as your main lighting, try to pick a north facing window, and especially pick a window with sheer drapes. Doing this reduces the chance of strong direct sunlight from making your portrait too contrasty.

And have some fun with it! Try zooming in and zooming out and trying out different things!

Take care,
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com

PhotoNews Magazine

Hey! Want a free subscription to a photography magazine that gets delivered right to your door? (At least for us Canadians.)

Go to http://www.photonews.ca/ and click on "subscribe".

Of course its filled with news about new gear that you're going to want to buy as well as "informational" articles about gear that you're going to want to buy, but it also has pretty good articles that really explain either some aspect of photography, how to use different types of gear or how to improve your photography and/or photographs.

And this magazine is printed on really nice, high gloss paper, which lets the pictures that they publish (and talk about) come out beautifully saturated with bright eye dazling colours!

There's also a seasonal "Photonews Challenge" that gets played out on their Flickr.com account.

Check this out!
Take care,
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com

Making Blue Skies Blue! [Underexposing a bit.]

Ok. So what's the secret to making the sky in your photos more dramatic, more impactful? There are many tips-and-tricks, but today I'm just going to cover one of the easiest -- slightly underexposing the picture.

Background
When I think of a photograph with a dramatic sky, I think of a sky with lots of nicely saturated colours. Not a sky that is pale white. If you look through your photos and notice that the sky doesn't seem as dramatic as when you were there taking it, then read on.

The reason that skies end up looking pale (white) in photographs is usually because the sun (and the sun light reflected in the sky) is just so powerful that it ends up overpowering the sensor in your camera. Instead of the blue sky that you see when taking the picture getting recorded, the camera's sensor gets maxed out. All the Red, Green and Blue sensors all reach maximum. And the combination of maximum Red, Green and Blue is . . . white! The sky is over exposed.

What needs to happen is that the sky needs to be exposed slightly less in order to bring its light within the range of your sensor.

When you underexpose the picture, what happens is that not as much of the sunlight gets captured, and so the sensor on your camera doesn't get maxed out. Some of the pixels will become white, but a lot of them will become various shades of the sky that you see. Instead of a wall of white, you'll get an interesting and dynamic sky.

How to underexpose a picture when taking it.
Ok, some cameras have a "Sunrise or Sunset" scene mode. When you select this mode on your camera, it will automatically underexpose the picture a bit.

Now, if your camera doesn't have this scene mode or if you're not happy with the result, you have another option.

If you're using a point-and-shoot camera or a dSLR in one of its auto modes, you can use "exposure compensation" (if your camera has this feature) to force the camera to underexpose the picture slightly. Read your camera manual (yes they are actually useful for something) and change the "exposure compensation" to "-1.0" and take a picture. If the picture seems a little too dark, change it to "-0.7 or -0.3". If the picture seems a little too light still, change it to "-1.3 or -1.7". In essence, the "exposure compensation" feature on your camera lets you tell the camera to under (or over) expose the picture, giving you creative control to get the photo you want.

This also works if you use flash. If you do turn down your "exposure compensation" when using flash, you may want to experiment turning up the "flash compensation" on your camera slightly as well. So, although you are underexposing the picture, you are turning up the flash so that your close subject matter gets properly lit. I often hear this described as "minus-one, plus-one" (ie. -1 exposure compensation, +1 flash compensation).

If you are using a dSLR camera in its manual mode and are controlling both the aperture and shutter setting, then simply change one or the other in order to underexpose the picture. For instance, if you are shooting at a shutter speed of 1/500 sec, then use 1/1000 sec instead.

Hope this helps!
Take care,
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com

Useful Sites, Links and Resources

There is so much useful information already out there on the Internet about cameras. The problem is finding them and keeping track of them. So I figure the 1st thing I'm going to do is create a page on my site listing all the sites that I find most useful!

http://digicamjunkie.blogspot.com/p/links.html

Take care!
Glen
:)

Welcome to DigicamJunkie.com!

Well, everyone seems to have a blog! So I've decided to start one up myself.

What will you find here? It will be the miscellaneous ramblings and thoughts of cameras, photography and how to take better pictures. Hopefully something interesting and useful to you!

Take care,
Glen
:)