How to use your flash effectively

Bad angles, high intensity, and using a flash out of its range of reach will cause your pictures to suffer from glare, red-eye effect, or insufficient lighting.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Camera
• Flash (attached or external)

1. First, a typical flash's range is up to fifteen feet for film cameras and six to ten feet for digital cameras. Subjects that are outside this flash range will be too dark.
2. Angle your flash or camera away from highly reflective surfaces in the scene you are photographing. A reflective surface behind your subject, such as glass or mirrors, will reflect the flash back to the camera’s lens causing bright glare to appear.
3. Reduce red-eye in your photos by using an external flash pointed slightly away from your subject's face. If your flash is permanently attached to your camera ask your subject to look slightly away from the camera, and increase lighting in the room to help shrink their pupils
4. Use fill-flash to illuminate a subject's dark shadows on a bright sunny day.
5. To create a softer more ambient light for portraits fixate a piece of white tissue over the flash to diffuse the light.

Tips & Warnings

• Check your flash's batteries often. Exhausted batteries will not give the flash it's full power.
• Using a higher speed film may extend your flash's reach by a few feet.