After modemmike's thread where he was trying to prove that his wife's use of the flash (and Auto) produced inferior pictures from a color saturation standpoint, I was left with this nagging question: When, outside of studio photography, is it OK or appropriate to use a flash? When do you more seasoned SLR guys fire up a flash?
one rule of thumb (and there are many): you should use flash when taking outdoor photos of your family, friends, pets, etc. it fills in the shadows under the nose and in the eye sockets.
So, if your outdoor subject is a person or thing (i.e. pet), then a flash is a good thing for the reasons you explained
hey harrra. I always use flash when taking pictures of people when outside, to fill in shadows. this is also one of the reasons I like "p" mode. either the d80 doesn't or I cant figure out how, to set shutter speed over 1/60th in "A" mode. "P" mode will automatically set the shutter speed up to 1/200th. This allows me to avoid firing off test shots in "a" mode, with impatient people, to find the right exposure at 1/60th and maybe f18+. now, our d80 does have one awesome automatic mode: the "night portrait" setting is great. it will fire off the flash, and then hold the shutter open for 1-2 seconds to get the background lighting also in the picture, just make sure everone knows to hold still. I think this is the setting the photopass people use at night too. that being said, the other auto settings, including portrait are no good in sunlight, because, they will not use the flash if "not needed".
here are examples of flash. the first is using night portrait mode on nikon d80. 1 sec exposure the second is regular flash. 1/60th sec exposure [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
If your subject (animal, mineral or vegetable) is heavily back lighted, using fill flash will help balance out the contrast. You can also fix that with software but it's easier to get with the camera. For an example, I used flash below of a portrait during a sunset. Another flash mode to check out is rear-sync...that's when the shutter opens first and just before it closes, the flash fires. You can get some neat effects like below.
at night when taking people pictures, look for a mode call slow shutter sync flash (or something like that). it holds the shutter open a bit longer to allow some of the ambient light to enter the pic as well as the main subject which the flash exposes.
Craig the difference in those two pics is amazing. Thanks for the visual reference. I really must begin playing around more with the settings on the camera and checking out the differences.
Pretty much the only time I use flash is when I a person in the shot, especially at dusk. BTW, how did the Mickey/Minnie pics from the Halloween pics turn out? I used a rear flash on those, I never even "chimped" to look at what I took on your camera... I think we were all wet and cold by the time we got to mouse so we were really thinking to much about settings so I hope they turned out.
Michael, I am in the process of uploading all those pictures to my Flickr account. Then I can point you to them and you can see for yourself. I think they looked great. Plus, they were shot in RAW so I'm sure there is some post production tweaks that could be done.
Ray, I know this is an older thread, but I found two more examples I had of flash vs. no flash. This is on the Maharajah Trek. Here I had the choice of exposing the wall or the sky, or using fill flash. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
