Shadows in photos with Rebel T2i

[drjulie77]

Most of my indoor photos taken with my Rebel T2i have a shadow to the left of the subjects.   I took the same photo with my Powershot s120 and did not get a shadow and am so very frustrated.  I have tried with and without the hood and have ensured that the subject was not close to a wall.  Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.  I have samples but I do not see a way to upload them to this site.

[RobertTheFat]

Uploading is trivial. While you're composing your message, it's an icon in the ribbon right above the typing window.

Are you using the built-in flash? Some lenses are large enough to cast a shadow in the field of view.

[TCampbell]

Assuming you are using the flash, the lens, lens hood, a camera strap, your hand or fingers, etc. can all cause these sorts of things.

Make sure the camera strap is out of the way.  While your right hand is unlikely to block the flash (because it's on the grip and pressing the shutter button) the left hand should be supporting the camera from below (hold the left hand with palm facing up, then "rest" the camera in your hand so that your fingers can control the zoom ring from below (an "under-hand" grip -- not an "over-hand" grip).  That'll keep that left hand away from the flash (it's also a steadier way to hold the camera and allows you to shoot at lower shutter speeds.)

If you've got a lens-hood on your lens but are shooting with flash, you might want to remove that hood.  Long lenses can also be a problem with just the built-in pop-up flash (an external flash puts the light source higher and farther away from the lens so that shadows are less likely to be a problem.  

Remember that a point & shot like your Powershot has a fairly tiny lens and it's physically short.  Your T2i's lens is comparitively much larger and depending on which lens you are using, does have the potential to create a shadow if the lens is large enough.

One last thing... if you are using the camera in one of the automatic modes, then the camera will control the shutter speed when using flash.  If you are using a manual shooting mode, make sure you are selecting a shutter speed which is no faster than the camera's maximum "flash sync" speed.  For your camera, that is 1/200th of a second (so anything 1/200th sec... or slower will be ok.)  If you set a faster shutter speed then the shadow can be created by the internal camera shutter (at very high speeds the shutter only exposes a "slit" which sweeps across the imaging sensor to capture the shot... the "whole" sensor is never actually exposed at the same time.  This means only the part of the sensor exposed when the flash fired will get the benefit of the flash.  When you use 1/200th or slower, the camera is able to have the entire sensor exposed when the flash fires.

[drjulie77]

Yes, I was using a built-in-flash but I get the shadow with an external flash as well and with and without the hood.

[drjulie77]

Thank you.  I had looked there but somehow missed it:(

[drjulie77]

This is the same shot with my powershot with no flash  f 3.5, 1/20 sec.

[drjulie77]

These were with the Rebel on auto with "flash compulsory" ,f 5.6, 1/60 sec

[TCampbell]

Those are normal shadows caused by a direct flash.   If you don't like the shadow you could just opt to not use the flash.  There are numerous options to "soften" the shadow by using a broad light source (not a pinpoint source).  Typically an external flash is diffused by use of a modifier such as a soft-box or a shoot-through umbrella (lots of options here.)

[RobertTheFat]

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@TCampbell wrote:

Those are normal shadows caused by a direct flash.   If you don't like the shadow you could just opt to not use the flash.  There are numerous options to "soften" the shadow by using a broad light source (not a pinpoint source).  Typically an external flash is diffused by use of a modifier such as a soft-box or a shoot-through umbrella (lots of options here.)

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Bounce flash also reduces that kind of shadow. And most (all?) Canon external flashes come with a built-in diffuser. (But the cheap plastic add-on diffusers that are universally available are usually too dense and/or too yellow.)

[drjulie77]

Thank you so much!