Help Cure Ignorance!

[Donjo3]

I'm still new at photography, and I'm using an point and shoot kodak of my girlfriends. I've almost got enough for my 6.3 dSLR Canon Rebel, but until then, I've got a few questions. One, I was out taking pictures near a small waterfall yesterday, it was semi-dark out, but I don't like to use the flash, is there any way to make it not so harsh looking? I heard something about putting rizla papers over it, what exactly are those? And also, alot of my pictures look blurry, is there anyway to fix this? The camera has a stabilizer feature, and its never looked blurry before, could it be that the flash was off? Thanks for your time

 

[Iron Flatline]

Some quick answers, because I do not have as much time as I would like:

Rizla are rolling papers. The point the person was probably trying to make is to diffuse the flash, for which there are a lot of inexpensive products you could buy. The rolling paper is not going to do a LOT.

If you're shooting at night you almost always should consider using a tripod. You can increase the ISO, which makes your chip more sensitive to light, but you will get "noisy" pictures. That means their image quality is not very good. Use a lower ISO and a small aperture (f11 - f22), and compensate for it with a longer exposure (lower shutter speed). But if you're going to have a long exposure, it is virtually impossible to hold the camera absolutely still - hence the tripod!

 

[rmh159]

Ok if I'm hearing you correctly you're asking

1. How do you use a flash without having the lighting come off harsh?

2. How do you keep the camera for blurring a shot during low light.

To answer the first one... I think you kind of hit the nail on the head with "I don't like using flash...". Personally I try to avoid using the flash unless my options are Flash or No Picture. In your case of shooting a waterfall in low light... I wouldn't consider using it. How you'd tone it down though would be to look through your camera's menu and adjust the flash to have less power. You could also put something over the flash... I believe there are things you buy that cover up the flash to a degree though I've done the same thing with a napkin.

For that specific shot though... I wouldn't consider a flash as an option which leads into the 2nd question.

The quick answer is that in low light the camera needs more light to get a good exposure. It gets more light by using a bigger aperture (hole in the lens) or / and slowing down the shutter speed. If the shutter speed is slowed down you'll notice a blur from your twitchy hands holding the camera.

The easy solution for both problems is a tripod. If you could set the camera on a tripod you could avoid the flash and twitchy hands. You'll also notice a MUCH better shot (more colors, less blown highlights/shadows, etc.) than what you could get with the flash and hand holding the camera. Personally I find shots like that taken with a flash to look very newb-esque so... yeah a tripod is a quick and easy fix.