Photography Beginner

Built In Flash

This is an additional lighting source provided by your camera for when the normal lighting conditions get too dark to take photograph without showing movement or camera shake.

Most compact cameras now have at least 3 flash modes to help take a better picture, but when using any flash setting, it is always useful to be aware that any part of the subject that is nearer the camera than others will get hit with more light from the flash. This could cause part of your subject to be completely over exposed and bleach out much of the detail in some areas, very bad if it happens to be someone’s face!

So when taking a photograph of a group with the flash turned on, try to make sure everyone is about the same distance away from the camera.

Light is a very destructive force, and can literally leach the color from paper, fabric, photographs, color pigment, etc, which is one reason most museums and galleries do not allow flash photography.  Flash can irreparably damage the works of art.   It is also dangerous to use flash to photograph sport, motor sports or when driving.

But you must know the limits of your camera’s small built in flash unit.  It is not a powerful halogen beam that can travel great distances to light up buildings, concert or sporting arenas or the whole of a street.  It has limited power and so the flash does not illuminate a great distance from the camera for the purpose of taking a photograph.

That is the reason why, when you take a picture at a school concert from the 10th row, you get a nicely lit picture of the back of the heads of the people in front and not necessarily a nicely exposed picture of your child in their school production.  That’s not to say you can’t use it to creative effects, just don’t expect too much from your humble flash!

Flash Settings

Auto Flash (May also appear as lightning bolt with A)
Using the automatic flash mode allows the camera to assess whether there is enough light about to take a reasonably exposed photograph without having to use too slow a shutter speed, which would risk the photograph being blurry due to camera shake.  It means that you don’t have to think about putting the flash on, and so don’t need to worry about missing a picture if it gets too dark.  A disadvantage though is that it can sometime fire unnecessarily, which may give an unnatural look to a photo that could have been taken using the available light quite successfully.

No Flash
This is the symbol which shows that you have turned your flash off completely.  It will not now fire under any circumstances, no matter how dark it gets.

Forced Flash
This setting means you are making the camera flash every time you take a photo, whether there is a need to or not.  You can use this to great effect when a subject is ‘back lit’ – that is the light source (the sun or other light) is behind the subject but in front of you.  Although there is enough light to take a picture of sorts, using the forced flash mode will allow you to light the subject from the front.  If you use the Forced flash mode with someone standing in front of a window, it can make it look like it was night outside if not carefully balanced.  (Further discussion of advanced flash modes and techniques, including fill-in flash, are discussed in another part of this series).

One very big problem with most compact flash units is the dreaded Red Eye – making every person look like a blood-thirsty vampire and every animal look like its come straight from the bowels of hell.

Red eye is caused when light enters the eye in a straight line and then bounces straight back out off the retina, illuminating the blood vessels at the back of the eye and so giving the human eye its red glow.

Animal eyes turn green because of a special coating on the eye’s retina which acts like a mirror.  This coating helps them to see even in very dim lighting conditions, but it also means that animal eyes are very reflective even with very little light.

As most compact cameras have the flash almost directly over the lens, the light coming out of the flash has nowhere to go but straight into the eye, and since the eye’s pupil will almost certainly be very dilated because of the dim light, the flash will cause red eye in most cases.

One simple solution is to try and get people to look slightly off centre to minimize the amount of parallel (straight) light going into and out of the eye.  The camera, however, has another flash setting.

Red Eye reduction

Red eye reduction setting is found within the flash menu.  When this mode of flash is set and the shutter is pressed, it causes the camera to send out either a bright beam of red light or it will set off a burst of flash first, before it takes the actual picture. This to get the iris to contract and make the pupils smaller, which in turn allows less light to bounce in and out of the eye, and so minimizes the amount of red eye experienced.

Red eye reduction mode can cause much confusion, as people think the picture has been taken sooner than it has because of the first flash.  If you use this flash setting, best to warn people that there will be 2 flashes and that the photograph will be taken on the second one.  Better you tell them than end up with a photo where half the people have turned away thinking it was all over.

Have you been getting out your camera and trying all of the settings?

We are almost done with this series!

Sheila