Who says on-camera flash has to blow?!
- November 27th, 2010
- Posted in Photography
- By Martin Iwanowicz
- Write comment
Common misconception: Using the built-in flash always results in awful pictures. Case in point:
A sexy picture of me using built-in flash
Alright, I know you can’t resist that lovable face, but let’s be brutally honest – this picture sucks. I s’pose I could have chosen a picture with better composition, or one that was in focus, or without such a doofy look on my face, but I’m trying to prove a point here – on-camera flash often achieves terrible results. Many people think it ALWAYS achieves terrible results. I beg to differ:
Slightly more flattering on-camera flash
Same photo shoot, taken approximately 10 minutes apart. Much better, no? Ok, so I admit – there’s more going on here than just the lighting. The second picture is a completely different composition, and I actually managed to look half decent. It’s probably the only shot in the entire series where I don’t look mildly retarded.
But I digress, I’m not here to talk about my modeling capabilities, I’m here to talk about being creative. Let me give you some background – I wanted a profile picture for this blog. For a variety of reasons I don’t want to use any of my stocked photos, so I decided to do some self-portrait work. I don’t actually own an external flash, I always borrow my roommate’s when I need one. Problem is – he’s out of town with all of his camera equipment.
I have motivation to do this photo shoot RIGHT NOW but no proper flash equipment. The solution?
A hair brush.
Specifically, a hairbrush Lufthansa gave me when they lost my luggage, two or three years ago. Also a rubber band and an extra Compat Flash card… Oh, and a white wall.
Bounce that Flash, Lufhansa hair brush!
First – I apologize for this crappy photo. Instead of using a complex mirror setup to have the camera take a picture of itself (I did think about doing that) I just used my cell phone camera, which is awful, at best, but it gets the job done.
The setup:
The hairbrush has a mirror in the handle. It is also a folding brush, so I used the rubber band to attach it to the pop-up flash on my camera, then angled the handle approximately 45 degrees. The compact flash card just adds a little more support to keep it propped up properly. Bounce that flash on a white wall, and voila! Studio finish lighting!
Note: I am holding a white reflector behind the camera in this shot, but I didn’t use it for my portrait photo as I had a nice white wall to bounce off of. Also it’s worth noting that I turned the flash exposure up to +2, the highest my built-in flash will go.
I love creative solutions to absolutely unnecessary problems. ;-)
Cheers!
-Martin
You can also diffuse your built in flash with out doing light bouncy techniques. Masking tape works great. Layer it until you get the desired effect, then peel it of when you’re done. No residue.
@jordy
Very true! I’ve actually used a white napkin for the same effect :)
But my goal wasn’t just to diffuse the light, but also to get it to come in from a different direction. The mirror directs the light without diffusing it (much) and then the white wall (or reflector) fills in from the side (or wherever).