Flash Photo Tips

Know your flash limits

Have you ever noticed at a football game or school Christmas concert, flashbulbs popping off like an electrical storm? Many people simply don?t realize that flash pictures taken from a distance generally don?t turn out. The distance of your flash range varies from camera to camera, but most cameras will not reach more than about 15 feet with their flash. That translates into dark, grainy, underexposed images taken from afar.

Here are some tips to help avoid problems with flash at a distance:

Get closer

Sometimes this is not possible, but sometimes it is! Try to imagine a 15 foot bubble around your camera and do whatever you can to get your subjects in the bubble. Five to 10 feet is an optimal distance for group shots.

Cut the zoom

The more a lens is zoomed in, the less light it allows to enter the camera. Without flash, the camera compensates by taking a longer exposure. With flash, your exposure is locked in (usually at 1/125th of a second) and the result can be underexposed images. You may be better off with a zoomed-out, nicely exposed image than with a zoomed-in, underexposed image. You can always crop the picture in your computer or on our kiosk!

Stay still and don't flash

In difficult situations, you can always try forcing your camera to turn its flash off (come in to the store and we?ll show you how). Your challenge is that the camera will take a much longer exposure and may introduce camera shake, which results in blurry pictures. Some ways around this are to turn on more lights if possible, use a tripod, or brace yourself against a wall or solid object and hold the camera as still as possible.

This article is © Copyright 2008 Photo Express foto source