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Flash Features & Ways People are Using Flashes

Wize Buying Guide for Flashes

Light is what makes photography possible, so when there’s little of it, why not create the best that there is? Flash units can help create light softly and evenly, much better, than, a flash that’s connected to a point-and-shoot camera or dSLR.

Many flash units for dSLR cameras can automatically adjust the camera white balance settings and the zoom flash position to match the sensor size of the camera to which the unit is attached. It’s also true that can buy flash units that can electronically recognize your camera’s exposure, focusing and zoom settings, but you still need to know a few things before you go out and buy one.

Two concerns of flash photography are harsh lighting of subjects and objects and people’s eyes appearing red in photographs.

There’s nothing worse than to have your subject’s eyes bright red in a photograph you’ve taken of them. Red-eye happens when the flash on a camera fires, light travels directly into the eye, and bounces off the retina back into the camera lens. There are two ways to lessen the red-eye effect--moving the flash so that it’s not aimed directly at the eyes or emitting light before the flash so that pupils get small enough so that light can’t bounce off of them.

Flashes that come with point-and-shoot cameras usually put out too much light in a limited space, giving your pictures a white cast with a black background. They also are positioned in such a way that the light goes directly to the eyes of subjects you are photographing. For this reason, you might opt for an external flash unit.

DSLR cameras have a hot shoe to which you can attach a flash unit. These have more power than the pop-up flashes that come some dSLR cameras. Since the flash unit is mounted a good distance above the top of the camera, it’s further away from the eye so that red-eye can be prevented.

One way to make the light in a flash picture subtler is to bounce the light off of something so your subject/object receives indirect light. Flash units come with features that let you move the flash in different directions. You can buy flash units that don’t move round, flash units that only tilt and flash units that tilt and swivel. The Canon Speedlite 430EX Flash, for example, has both tilt and swivel options. It’s also important to look at how much the units tilt and swivel.

When buying a flash unit you want one that puts out light that extends beyond your subject so you can see the background. Pop-up flash units don’t go as far as external units.

Flash units come with a maximum guide number which measures the maximum distance the light will go to illuminate the subject. The higher the guide number, the further the light from the flash will go.

When buying a flash unit, you can choose among basic, midrange and high-end units. The basic units support TTL (through the lens metering), but do not swivel or tilt. The midrange units have more power. Some tilt and swivel. Most have no manual controls. The high-end units tilt and swivel and have manual controls.

Last, it’s not a good idea to use an older flash unit, say, one that went on your old film camera, on a digital camera as it could burn out the camera.

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Flash Features & Ways People are Using Flashes

Wize Buying Guide for Flashes

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