When taking photographs outside on a sunny day, you will notice issues of shadows especially when the sun is behind your subject, or you have placed them against a wall and the light is causing a harsh shadow. Fill in flash is a very useful technique that you can use to fill in the dark areas and add some luminance to the image.
Fill in flash is called this because it is secondary to the main or ‘key’ light (in this case, daylight). On a very bright day, the camera may or may not decide the need for fill in flash – some cameras may be fooled into thinking that it is very bright and therefore flash isn’t necessary. If so, you need to override the cameras instincts and choose force the flash to fire.
In the last post, we covered some reasons you may want to use flash - now what if you are ready to make an investment? Flashguns can be reasonably priced to quite expensive - this depends on the brand you go for and the model. Newer models have far more features but they will cost more - however, the investment may be worth it if you want your flash to last for a good few years.
Nearly all cameras, from your high end SLR’s to disposable cameras have a flash function on them. A necessary evil, flash adds light when necessary, so that even in the darkest scenarios, a decent, sharp photograph can be captured. These days, we have digital cameras so we can see how the flash is doing immediately; too bright or too harsh, we can tweak accordingly to get a better shot.
You grab your trusty camera, flip it on and start to snap away happily, getting in nice and close. You hear a sudden CLICK from your camera’s flash, and look to the back of the camera only to see a bleached and almost white outline of what looks like a head.
