Working with a flash

[padrepaul77]

I recently added on an Olympus flash to my E620, and am getting the hang of it. Here are two pictures; one was with no processing, the other was adjusted using Elements.

Actually, I found the image quality to be a little better without the flash, as it seemed too powerful and made my subjects a bit bright. This was a German polka/dinner party, and was a well-lit room but a flash was needed as it was just overhead lights and was night.

I had the flash set on "auto" and at "35mm" and was using a 40-150mm lens; in hindsight I probably should have used the 14-42mm lens, but wanted to try out this lens as I had not used that one yet.

Any suggestions? Thanks! - Paul

 

[Samanax]

Flash Photography Techniques

 

[VltnDennis]

did u bounce the flash?

 

[Village Idiot]

did u bounce the flash?

No, he did not.

I recently added on an Olympus flash to my E620, and am getting the hang of it. Here are two pictures; one was with no processing, the other was adjusted using Elements.

Actually, I found the image quality to be a little better without the flash, as it seemed too powerful and made my subjects a bit bright. This was a German polka/dinner party, and was a well-lit room but a flash was needed as it was just overhead lights and was night.

I had the flash set on "auto" and at "35mm" and was using a 40-150mm lens; in hindsight I probably should have used the 14-42mm lens, but wanted to try out this lens as I had not used that one yet.

Any suggestions? Thanks! - Paul

I take it you have an external flash unit. Trying angling the head up to point at the ceiling, as long as the ceiling isn't 20' up. This will causing the light to reflect off the ceiling, lighting a greater area and creating softer shadows since the light source is now the area of the ceiling that the flash covers instead of just a small flash head.

When you aim the flash forward and fire (while in automatic mode), it will expose for the subject that your camera is metering. The small light source causes harsh shadows and there will be a lot of fall off of the light since everything behind your subject is farther and farther away from the light source. Look up the rule of inverse square.

Think of it as water. If you spray a person with a hose, they get hit hard and people behind them are either shielded by the person in front or they're barely getting wet because the spray disperses and the water falls off. That's a straight on on camera flash.

Now if you have the ceiling sprinklers on in a room, everyone's going to get covered and they're going to be hit by roughly the same amount. That's like bouncing a flash off a ceiling.