How To Use Light In Photos

How To Use Light In Photos
My name is Chris Conklin on behalf of expertvillage.com. We have talked a lot about the camera. Some of the camera techniques, but now let us go over and let us talk little bit about the lighting aspects of it. Now, a couple of questions that you will ask yourself is when should I use a flash and when should I not use a flash. Well, that also depends upon whether you are indoors or you are outdoors. Yes you can use the flash outdoors and sometimes that is important. The difference between indoors and outdoors is the controllability of your lighting. Indoors most of the time you can control the lighting that exists inside the facility or the room or the building that you are in. Now, the different types of lights… it can be a combination of or they could be florescent, incandescent, halogen cords, all of those are going to have a different color factor on your settings on the camera and how the picture is going to come out. So, that’s another reason why it is always important to white balance under every different lighting situation that you come across. Now, indoor lighting you might be fine just with exactly what it is that you having in there if that is the look and feel and the mood that you are sitting. If it’s soft enough, it is not too bright and things like that, but you might want to use a flash to fill up the room or the space behind it or if you have got too much of a contrast that exists between the subject and the camera you can use it as what is known as a fill light. Now, cameras such as this and a majority of the cameras they come with automatic flashes. Okay, now these are usually good for close-up type of shots, pretty much like we are sitting here I can take a shot like this and it goes off and it will take a nice clean picture of what I am just looking at, which is the camera and the associated items in the background. Now, for more sophisticated lighting situations an extended flash, something like this. This is a programmable flash unit it has zoom functions in it, it has automatic motoring functions in it and it also is adjustable. It has flash cards and it also has infusers. Now depending upon again how you want to use it you could set it up and flash and bounce off the ceiling or bounce off an object or you can point it directly at your objects and also you can control the amount of strength that the light is putting out. You can go down to an eighth of a power or you can go up to a full power of light flash that comes out of the camera. If you are fairly close to your objects, but you still want to have some fill in the background you want to use less power of course.