Simple Tips for flash photography

I believe that getting a “Hot-Shoe” flash is one of the best ways to improve your family photography. A hot shoe flash is an add on flash that slides into the u shaped slot(shoe) on top of an SLR camera. I notice that many people will buy a "fancy" lens as their first accessory to their Digital SLR. Although fancy lenses have their place, and I have several, I think for shooting pictures of kids, a good flash is a better purchase. Many pictures of kids are taken indoors, and the advantages of Hot-Shoe flash over the built-in are numerous.

Reasons to go buy a Hot-Shoe Flash today

You don’t have to be Annie Leibovitz. Flash photography can be easy. On every digital SLR I have used the green square (automatic) mode works great with an  add on flash. While it is true that great equipment does not make a great photographer, one does not need to be beaten by equipment. Indoor photography is easier with a Hot-Shoe flash.

No more demon baby. One noticeable advantage is no more red eye from the flash. Red eye is caused by the flash's close proximity to the lens when ambient light is low. The height of a typical Hot-Shoe flash removes the red eye affect. Pretty cool – by doing nothing more than plugging in the flash and using it, you remove one of the most prevalent problems in indoor snapshots.

Speed Matters. One of the most common complaints I hear about cameras is that the camera takes too long to take the picture. Often this is caused by the flash charging for the next shot. With good batteries your external flash will charge and fire right away.

No Lens Obstruction. A few years back, my wife bought me a fancy lens for my digital rebel. I was eager to use it, and brought it with us to dinner with some friends. I took a bunch of photos, and the first thing I noticed was that the lens obstructed the flash! My new lens was casting a big shadow when using the built-in flash. An external flash moves the flash up high enough so a bigger lens does not cast a shadow.

Light looks more natural.  Here is an example photo showing the difference between using the built in flash, and using my Hot-Shoe flash. These poses were meant to be identical, but 1 year old babies are not known for sitting still while daddy messes around with the camera. For the picture on the left, I used the hot shoe flash and bounced the flash off the ceiling. Notice how much more natural the light looks.
 

Flash Tips and Techniques

Bounce Flash. Hot-Shoe Flashes offer the ability to rotate along 2 axes. The importance of this can be seen in the above example photos. Aiming the flash up towards a white ceiling (everyone has a white ceiling) causes the light to disperse and reflect down, creating natural looking light. I also like to “bounce” the flash off of a wall – this creates lighting that looks like the subject is standing in front of a window.

Beyond Green Square. When I first got my flash, I could not get anything to work well except for automatic mode. After missing way too many shots, I finally figured out a method, and like many things in life, in hind sight it is obvious. My simple technique for getting sharp pictures with the flash is as follows:
1)Set camera mode to Shutter Speed (T on Canon Cameras – S on Nikon Cameras).
2)Set the shutter speed to 1 click bigger than 1/your current zoom. Your current zoom can be found by looking at the barrel of the lens. The top of the lens should have an arrow that points to numbers indicating zoom. Move the shutter so that the bottom number (denominator for you math wizzes) is equal to or greater than the number pointed to by the arrow on the lens barrel. On Canon cameras the shutter speed dial is directly behind the shutter button. On Nikon cameras it is directly in front of the shutter button. Try moving the shutter plus and minus one click and look at the difference. Sometimes you need to make the shutter speed a little faster, to make sure things are not blurry.

Cool Blur Effect. Most of the time, I am trying to prevent blurry images when I use a flash. But sometimes having a portion of the image blurry creates a neat effect. If you lower the shutter speed (make the bottom number smaller), the image starts to get blurry. By adding flash, the point in time where the flash fires is in focus. This is hard to describe in words, see the below image of my niece running for an example.

To achieve this effect, set a slow shutter speed and use flash on a moving target. Often a little experimentation is required. Fortunately kids have boundless energy, and are more than willing to run back and forth until you get the right effect.
Hopefully this answers some of your questions about flash photography. Happy shooting.