I'm really unfamiliar with my on camera flash. I've almost never used it. I only got a couple of shots off that night as I was having some problems with my camera (which turned out to be operator error).
One of these shots actually turned out better than I thought possible with on camera flash, I think mainly because my two fellow students weren't standing directly in front of anything and they weren't looking directly at me so there weren't any harsh shadows behind them and no red eye. I think the main burst of the flash went between them and so they got exposed pretty nicely. I used a pretty wide aperture setting (f3.5) and 400 ISO to try to get more ambient light. That caused some white balance issues and they look a little bit pink to me.
The other shot (taken just before our instructor let something fly in my direction) is a perfect example of everything I think is wrong with on camera flash - harsh shadows, a weird isolated look from the surroundings... at least no red eye!
If the person is not looking directly at the built-in OR external camera flash, red eye is not an issue.
ReplyDeleteThe challenge to using ANY flash, is to balance the emitted light with the ambient light so it looks natural.
What could you have done to prevent the harsh shadow behind me?
BUT thinking outside the box - How CAN you use a hard edged shadow like this to ENHANCE an image?
(You owe me $20 for taking my pic!)