Tips for using on-camera flash

Introduction: What are the techniques for using on-camera flash during shooting? Below I will bring you 8 tips on using on-camera flash. Interested friends can follow along and learn together! 8 Tips for Using On-Camera Flash

Photography Tips

Using on-camera flash, you can get great portrait lighting. You don’t need to spend a fortune on expensive accessories to control the light because everything you need is already there. You need to understand that the flash is just a light source and it obeys your arrangement. Fortunately, you can learn how to control the light produced by a flash and shape it into any shape you need. Plus, there are some additional benefits to doing this.

The light produced directly by the flash is rough. You must do the following things to improve the light:

Create a large light source for the subject

From direct illumination Lighting the subject from a different angle

The following tips can help you achieve the above goals.

1. Bounce flash

This is the number one weapon in on-camera flash technology. When shooting indoors, a room with light-colored walls and ceilings can be used as reflective surfaces throughout to create beautiful photos. You can create a softbox-like lighting effect or even use a flash to create a large area of ??light.

Use wall or ceiling bounce flash

Although the flash itself is only a small light source, it can cover most of the wall and ceiling area. These areas covered by light become large-area light sources relative to the subject.

Use the on-camera flash to light the left side of the camera, and use the wall and ceiling bounce flash

Use the bounce flash technology to shoot portraits. I usually use the flash to light the ceiling and walls, and I imagined there was a softbox there, lighting my subject from a traditional portrait lighting angle. When shooting, the angle of your subject, combined with the use of a pop-up flash, is key to getting the results you want.

You can also angle the flash upward or behind you, and rotate the flash 45 degrees toward walls and ceilings to fill the entire house with beautiful light.

2. Occlusion

One thing that many people don’t realize is that the light emitted by the flash is diffused in all directions, rather than a simple beam of light. While most of the light is emitted forward, there is still some light that is spread out at a perpendicular angle to the flash.

Even if the flash is zoomed to the telephoto end, there is still a lot of light spreading around. A small light shield can limit this situation.

When using a jump light, even if the flash lights upward at a nearly vertical angle, there is still diffused light that directly illuminates the subject. Although this situation is not necessary to avoid, it will cause a "snapshot" shadow effect, especially when there is a wall or other flat surface behind the subject, the shadow will be particularly obvious.

In order to eliminate this effect, you can add a piece of opaque material or a black plastic foam board to the flash head to block the diffused light from reaching the subject. This small change can make a huge difference to the overall effect of your photo.

3. Expand the light source

The relative size of the light source and the subject determines the overall effect of the photo. A large light source is what is called soft light, which means the transition between highlights and shadows is softer.

We have already discussed how to use walls or ceilings to change the size of the light source. But what if there are no walls or ceilings available?

You can still use simple reflectors to change the size of the light source. Because the size of the light reaching the subject is at least twice the reflective area, you can get a very large light source coverage area. This can often produce very good lighting effects when the subject is not too far away.

Indoors, this type of reflector has the added benefit of lighting the subject from two directions: direct reflected light and ceiling emitted light.

Simply attach white cardboard or plastic foam to the flash. Of course, you can also try to control the light in any way you like.

4. Use TTL

Most modern flashes provide multiple working modes. For example, I often use off-camera flash in manual mode. This way I can ensure consistent flash output in similar shooting situations, like traditional portraiture.

On the other hand, in TTL mode, the camera and flash determine the amount of light output. The camera and flash jointly determine the output of the flash after measuring the correct exposure. Most modern TTL systems, such as Canon's E-TTL and Nikon's i-TTL, work great.

TTL can be used in most situations, including camera manual mode, outdoors, and even when jumping lights. TTL can make your shooting a lot easier, especially when shooting fast movements, and there's no reason not to use it with your on-camera flash.

When you are ready, you may want to learn more advanced techniques of using flash exposure compensation and general exposure compensation with TTL flash. These controls allow you to easily adjust the flash and camera exposure, but the main work is still done by the TTL system.

5. Use high-speed shutter synchronization

If your flash has a high-speed synchronization function, be sure to turn it on. The common sync speed of most flashes is 1/250-1/350s. This speed is no problem in low-light environments, such as indoors, and you can shoot within the sync speed as much as you like. This means you can use 1/40s speed to record ambient light, or use faster speeds to separate your subject from the environment or freeze motion.

The 1/2500s f/2.8 exposure required the use of high-speed shutter sync when taking this photo

However, outdoors, if the exposure requires a faster shutter speed, only high-speed shutter sync is available Allows you to shoot with high-speed shutter speeds, up to 1/8000s.

If the normal sync speed combined with the aperture and ISO you choose will cause ambient light to be overexposed, then you need a faster shutter speed. This often happens when shooting outdoors, where high-speed shutter sync is a must.

Always turning on the high-speed shutter sync function does not mean that it is always used. The camera and flash will turn on high-speed sync only when your shutter speed exceeds the normal sync speed. Otherwise, the flash will work in normal mode.

6. Control color temperature

Digital SLR cameras provide white balance settings to control global color. And if you shoot in Raw format, you can also use software to adjust the white balance in post-production.

But sometimes you want to make sure that the color temperature of the light emitted by the flash is close to that of the ambient light, so that the light in the entire photo has the same color.

Again, if you adjust the white balance in post-production, it means you want to get the best photo effect, but this requires the light color temperature of the photo to be consistent.

When using a flash in a tungsten light environment, you can add a CTO (color temperature orange) color chip to the flash. Set the camera white balance to tungsten, and you can fine-tune the white balance in post if you like.

7. Use ambient light

Another typical abuse of on-camera flash is the black background effect. That is, the subject is exposed correctly, but the ambient light is underexposed. Shooting the environment together can better explain the subject's environment and bring a better sense of atmosphere.

1/40s exposure, using a reflector

Even if your camera has a preset mode for this effect, I strongly recommend using the camera's manual mode. This way you can use a slower shutter to accurately record ambient light and achieve the effect you want.

Using flash and long exposures

I find that 1/15-1/40s is suitable for most environments, including outdoors at night. The TTL function is usually still used to let the camera and flash make the right decisions about the lighting of the subject. However, exposure to ambient light is determined by you by controlling the shutter speed.

8. Turn off the flash

Sometimes, the best thing you can do with your on-camera flash is to turn it off. As you get more comfortable with using flash, you may be inclined to use it all the time. But you can't always rely on flash. After all, there are many situations where there is good light to take advantage of. It's just that when you need a little extra light, you know you can get a good photo with a flash, and that's enough.

Sometimes using flash to fill in the light is not the right approach