Using flash

Flash can be very useful, but it has its disadvantages

Why has he got red eyes in the photo on the left?
This occurs because the pupil of the eye opens up in dimmer lighting: you then see the flash reflected in the blood vessels of the retina.

There are several possible solutions, of which one of the most convenient is to buy one of the special red-eye pens. You wait until you've got a print that needs retouching, then you carefully dot the red part of the eye so that it is covered in black. Practice first on an old photo, as there's a knack to doing this! But you'll soon get the hang of it. Or you can use a computer with an image editing program to black it out. The improvement can be seen top right

Many cameras come with a red-eye reduction device that fires off preliminary little flashes - just enough to close down the iris. But these don't always make all that much difference - and they often confuse the subject! (It's more effective to arrange for your subject to be looking away from the camera, but you may not want to do this.)

You can get a similar result by asking you're subject to glance at a bright light just before you take the picture. But this can result in a screwed-up face!

A better alternative would be to use a more powerful flash gun (so that you don't have to be so close) and to hold it well above the camera-subject axis. Or bounce its light off the ceiling. But it's a lot more economical just to buy a red eye pen....

The most common mistake when using flash is to forget its limitations: a typical built-in flash, used with a 200 ASA film, can't illuminate anything more than about 8-14 feet away (depending on the focal length being used), so all those people flashing away happily at distant objects in large buildings are just wasting their time!

The most common mistake when using flash is to forget its limitations: a typical built-in flash, used with a 200 ASA film, can't illuminate anything more than about 8-14 feet away (depending on the focal length being used), so all those people flashing away happily at distant objects in large buildings are just wasting their time!

To get as much as possible of a scene like this in focus, aim to set the focus on a person (or object) a third of the way towards the back of the area you want to be sharp.

Here, again, in this flash photo, the background comes out dark. This may be no bad thing if you're aiming at a portrait of the child as there's little there to distract attention. If you want to avoid this effect, though, set up your subject much nearer the background - but watch out for ugly shadows!

Flash can be invaluable, but more atmospheric shots can often be taken without it:

"The photo on the above right (taken without flash, just using the natural light from a window on the left) retains much more of the feeling of the location, so is more interesting than the same scene on the left (for which flash was used)."

Interiors often have much more character when taken without flash - although there may be times when you'll need a tripod to hold the camera steady during a long exposure.

Taken with permission from Philip Grosset's Take Better Photos site