April 2008
Intermediate to advanced
176 pages
5h 45m
English
Content preview from Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers
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144 Using Light
Using Flash
Using Flash
Flash lighting can have many benefits. Chief among
these benefits:
n
Flash can stop motion more effectively than even
the fastest shutter speed.
n
Flash is (usually) very portable.
n
Flash has the same color temperature (5500K) as
sunlight, so flash can often be used very effectively
in fill mode in conjunction with natural light.
n
Flash is a particularly good light source for photo-
graphing people, because unlike other like artificial
light sources it does not generate heat, and also tends
to reproduce skin tones fairly naturally.
n
Flash gives you the potential for completely control-
ling the light source of an exposure.
Of course, there are downsides to weigh against these
benefits, and I’ll get to them in a moment.
Most digital cameras come with a built-in flash. If you
use a built-in flash as your light source, your subject
will be harshly front-lit.
A particular pitfall with dSLRs is to use a lens shade
and the built-in flash simultaneously. The lens shade
often produces a huge, unattractive dark shadow ob-
scuring a large portion of the photo. Resolve this prob-
lem
simply by removing the lens shade when you use
your built-in flash.
You can soften the characteristics of flash as a light
source in several ways (these suggestions may not work
with a flash unit built in to your camera).
It helps to fire the ...
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