How to Use the Flash Feature in Digital Cameras

Video Transcript

"So a great thing about these little digital cameras is they got these wonderful built in flash controls and they are so much easier to get to now then they use to be. On my camera, if you just press towards the flash button and right away it pops up, I got my three choices, do I want my flash on auto, do I want it off, or do i want it on. Now the reason that it's important to have these controls is there are certain times when your camera thinks that there's plenty of light, so it doesn't want the flash to fire, but you realize that all that light is coming in right behind the subject. So maybe it's a sunset and the sky is really beautiful and lit up, but your subject is actually very dark. So if you turn the flash to on, if you force it on, that will, the camera knows that your trying to do what's called a fill flash and it will actually meter the subject and figure out exactly how much light you need to cast on a subject to fill it in. Like for example if I wanted to take a picture of my son here and he was sitting up and he had some shadow on his face. I might say "hey Dylan, can you smile?" and then the camera, you can see it didn't over expose or anything. It just filled in his face nice and evenly and that can work great if they're standing in the doorway and there's light coming in behind them or there's a sunset or any of those kinds of things. You may also want to turn your flash off at certain times when the flash thinks "oh there's not enough light" and it needs to come on. Situations like that might be if your subject is wearing glasses and you don't want to get the glare off of them or if, excuse me sweetie, hold on let me take another picture. Or if, here I'll turn my flash off. So maybe I just like the natural light that's coming in and I don't want the look of the flash or if you're sitting at the aquarium and you want to get the picture of the lobsters through the glass, but if you take a picture with the flash on, you basically just get big white bright light instead of the actual picture of the animal. So you will want to turn your flash off. Something to consider though, if there isn't enough light you may need a tripod or to brace your camera in order to get a good shot without the flash. Another time you may want to have the flash on is, flash is great for stopping or sort of resting the movement of a subject. So you can turn the flash on if you're trying to stop your child from moving all around, you can freeze their motion, right Dylan? So the flash will stop your subject in motion, so if you're doing a football game or a runner or you just have a child that won't sit still, forcing the flash is a great thing to do, right?"