Taking photographs: you don’t have to use flash

I always taken lots of photographs. I’ve always carried a camera with me. And since the advent of the digital camera I’ve done more of the former and the latter has been easier. I’ve had a Casio compact until that was stolen (click here for that story). Now I have a Nikon. Both good cameras and both small enough to carry in a pocket. I’ve also got a Sony SLR which I use less frequently.

One of the problems with small digitals is the built-in flash. Absolutely fine for fill-in flash and for simple mug shots although even with the latter it can deliver a harsh image (see below for a tip to make this less bad) with an unforgiving black background. Useless for anything more than a metre or two distant and certainly no good for nightscapes.

Nightscapes are easy enough to handle without flash as long as you follow the absolute rule: rest the camera on or hold it against some fixed object. This might result in some strange angles (see the photo to the left) but at least you’ve eliminated camera shake. You can try tilting the camera as well but this reintroduces the human factor. By the way this photo was under exposed by one stop to retain the details of the church. Simply using the auto exposure over exposes the church although you can then of course see more details of the houses along the river.

But it’s indoors where using the camera without flash yields the most rewarding results. Both the picture above and the one on the right were taken indoors without flash and in relatively poor (indoor) light. The camera was rested on the table top and that achieves several results: no camera shakes for starters but also an interesting angle and subjects totally unaware that the photograph is being taken. There’s such drama in such photographs that I’ve taken to making them a regular part of my photographic activity.

Finally: a tip to reduce the harshness of flash when you really need to use it for a mug shot: cover the flash with tissue paper. You’ll need to fold it over a few times but the result it very pleasing!