A few tips 'n tricks

Flash. You either hate it or love it. Some people steadfastly refuse to use it, thinking that it will bleach everything in the picture out.

However, used correctly it can greatly enhance a photo. I have prepared some notes on how to use fill in flash correctly using a wide variety of camera and flash types. You can find the info here.

The two pictures below show how I used fill in flash to lighten the shadows whilst photographing Marianne


I positioned Marianne with the sun behind her for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I didn't want her squinting with the sun in her eyes plus the backlighting or contrejour effect would highlight her hair. The shadows however were unnaceptable and the eyes looked dull with no sparkle or catchlights. The camera gave me a reading of 1/125 sec @ f16		...I fitted a flash to my camera and selected (on the flash itself) an aperture of f11. This ensured that the flash would fire with a light intensity of a little bit less than the ambient sunlight. The aim was to fill in the shadows and not to equal or overpower the sunlight. You can see that the eyes now have a sparkle to them.

Flash can also be used to add ambience to a scene. Most people dislike flash because it normally exposes the foreground at the expense of the background. This is because the sensor on the flash or in the camera itself "thinks" that the most important part of the picture is that directly in front of it. Most of the times this is true but there are of course occasions when you want the background to be illuminated as well.


This picture taken in a cave system is Switzerland illustrates the weakness of just "letting the flash get on with the job" The automatic sensor has stopped the flash giving anymore light than that necessary to illuminate the stalagmite. The programmed exposure was something like 1/60 sec @ f5.6. Think about it1/60 sec @ f5.6 is not a normal indoor exposure for suitable illumination.		...with this in mind, I steadied my camera with a small G-Clamp on a hand rail and set the shutter speed to 1 second , leaving the aperture at f5.6. This meant that after the flash had done it's work on the foreground, there was enough time left for the background to be recorded.

A little bit about HDR photography.

A little bit about digital image sensor size

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