4

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / People and Places Indoors

The advantage of the flash unit comes from its

ability to bounce the flash. This technique works

great indoors, where there is a nearby wall or ceil-

ing that you can bounce the light off of. The idea

is that the light no longer comes directly from the

flash, but comes indirectly from the bounce sur-

face. Here are some of the advantages of bounc-

ing the flash:

    ■   The light is softer and more even because the

light source is now much bigger.

    ■   There is less of a chance of any red eye

because the light is no longer as close to the

angle of the lens.

    ■   There are fewer hot spots, or areas that are

overexposed. These hot spots can be really

distracting because the eye is drawn to the

brightest part of the image.

    ■   There are fewer harsh shadows because the

light is effectively much larger than the small

flash head.

To do a basic light bounce using the flash unit,

just do the following:

1. Mount the flash on the camera.


2. Adjust the flash head so that it is angled at
   45 degrees and aimed over the head of the
   subject, instead of at 90 degrees.


3. Use the scene metering mode.


4. Use the auto exposure mode.


5. Take a photo.
   As you can see from Figures 4-7 and 4-8, there
   really is a big difference between the straight flash
   and the bounced flash. If you look at the wall in
   the background, you can really see the hard shad-
   ows and the soft shadows.

The built-in flash is usually right above the lens
and is aimed directly at the subject. This straight-
ahead direction means that the flash illuminates
the subject straight on and there are no shadows,
meaning no detail. There is also the problem of
red eye which is more common when the flash
and the lens are very close to each other. Because
the flash and lens are close, the angle that the
light travels when it bounces back from the sub-
ject when the flash is fired is close to straight at
the lens. The light from the flash bounces off the
back off the eye and the red blood vessels can be
seen through the wide-open iris in the photo.
Some cameras have a red-eye reduction feature
that fires a series of flashes before the main flash
to try and get the iris of the subject’s eye to con-
tract in response to the bright light. This works
sometimes, but, more often than not, after the
first pre-flash goes off, the subject moves thinking
the photo has been taken, and by the time the
actual flash goes off and the image is recorded,
the subject has moved or is no longer in the right
pose or smiling. It is also impossible to take a can-
did photo with the red-eye reduction setting
turned on as the pre-flashes give you away. The
only real advantage to the built-in flash is that it
is built-in and always available.

If you plan on photographing indoors a lot, then
a dedicated flash unit is the best way to go. They
are relatively inexpensive and you can use them
both on and off the camera. Many of the flash
units have adjustable heads that allow you to aim
the flash in different directions, and because they
have their own power supply, they don’t use any
of the camera’s battery power. You can also get
battery packs for the flash that increase the recy-
cle time and increase the amount of flashes before
you need new batteries.