Canon 600EX

[Kolourl3lind]

Hello all. I wanted to know if there is a way to turn down the brightness of the flash. Say if I am in a dark setting and I just want a little bit of light to fill in the subject.

Also what  does the setting that change the flashes 50mm to 100mm do?  That's not the power level is it?

Also if you have a diffuser on the flash is it still better to take the diffuser off and bounce the flash instead?

[MikeSowsun]

"Fuzzy" sounds to me like the shutter wasn't fast enough to feeze any movement. The movement could be from either camera shake or subject movement. Even with a slow shutter, the flash would freeze the subject and you would get a sharp photo. (flash duration is very short and will mimic a fast shutter speed)  

Can you post a sample photo?

What was your shutter speed?

Did the ISO change when using flash?

[Kolourl3lind]

ok I will post some tonight unprocessed O'natural.

My shutter speed was between 30 to 125 for some of the shots. I pushed it up to 400 with a flash to catch action.

I did change the iso from 3200 to 6400 and back at times.

Now when I say fuzzy, I all so mean kinda grainy too. So I guess that's iso.

[MikeSowsun]

When you use the flash there really isn't a need to make the shutter speed faster than 1/125. The flash duration is something like 1/8000 and that will freeze the movement for you.  Lower flash power means even shorter duration and it could be as fast as 1/20000 at low power.

Yes, higher ISO will give you grainy photos, but underexposed high ISO is even worse. Most people will tell you to try and slightly overexpose high ISO shots to reduce the grainyness.

If you used your flash with ISO 6400 it would probably have reduced the underexposure and give you cleaner photos with less grain.

Canon 580EX flash duration:

1/1 power = 1/1000 second
1/2 power = 1/2000
1/4 power = 1/4000
1/8 power = 1/9000
1/16 power = 1/15000
1/32 power = 1/21000
1/64 power = 1/30000
1/128 power = 1/35000

[Kolourl3lind]

Sorry I have been shoot like crazy the past couple of days.

OK here are 2 pictures. One with the flash. And the second with out. I tink the one with the flash is more in focus.

These are unedited. They both look like they can use some white balance work.

[digital]

Hard to tell. Image #2 is underexpsoed quite a bit compared to #1. Look a the noise in her arm. Noise will make an image look less sharp. They are pretty close. Also where was the focus point? Did she move her head as you took the shot. As for WB there was a purple light on her so that looks natural from the perspective of the event. However that does not mean you can't correct it if you want to. Not sure what your SS was but If you want flash to be more dominant you can kill some of the ambient with a faster speed. 1/160 or your cameras sync speed. I like the first shot.             

[Kolourl3lind]

#1 was with flash and #2 was without flash. I think 1 has less noise and a kind of hardness and sharpness do to the flash when compared to 2.

The light on 2 was natural from the concert lights. As you said there was more noise. I just notice that my pictures tend to be more sharp or crisp with a flash. I don't know if that's the lens or what.

[Skirball]

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@Kolourl3lind wrote:

I just notice that my pictures tend to be more sharp or crisp with a flash. I don't know if that's the lens or what.

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Of course, that's why people use flash.  Without it, in a dark situation, your camera is forced to push the limits to try to make exposure.  This will include lengthening the shutter speed, upping the ISO, opening up the aperture.  A slower shutter speed means that anything that moves (including your camera in your hands) will be more prone to movement blur.  Upping the ISO increases noise.  And even opening the aperture can cause the photo to be more blurry because the depth of field is smaller, meaning less in the composition will be in focus.

And equally as important, in a dark situation your camera will hunt for focus, if it gets focus at all, and by the time it does things could have moved, or it might focus on some bright light in the background instead of your subject.  With your flash on your camera it will fire a helper beam to lock focus a moment before taking the shot.

[Kolourl3lind]

ok. I understand that. But I still confused about  flash photography. When you use a flash  it seems aperture/shutter speed/ and iso almost go out the window.

[Skirball]

Almost, maybe, but they’re still very relevant.  ISO and aperture still affect a flashes power.  Shutter speed does not (below max sync speed), which is great because it allows us another method to balance the ratio between flash and ambient lighting.  Adding a forth variable (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and flash power) gives the camera significantly more flexibility in which settings will produce acceptable exposure.  If the user understands how flash and camera exposure relate it can provide the user significant flexibility as well, and opens up many new options for creativity.

Flash duration is very, very fast, much faster than a camera, which is why shutter speed doesn’t affect its exposure.  So at a given aperture, ISO, and flash power you can move the shutter speed around to control how much ambient light affects the exposure.  At that concert you were shooting: say you just wanted to focus on 1 person but the whole band is behind them, move that shutter speed to 1/200 and watch everything in the background fall into the shadows.  Or, if you like all the colored lights of the stage then set your camera to expose the background a few stops below a “normal exposure” and your flash will just help your subject pop out from the background.  The possibilities are near endless.

Flash is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting genres of photography.  And in this day and age with eTTL and wireless options, only your own creativity limits you.  I could ramble on for pages, but it’d be more effective if you asked a specific question.  In the mean time, there are all kinds of resources online.  I’m a huge fan of David Hobby, and I’d recommend you start here:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/

There’s an almost endless supply of knowledge in there.  It’s focused on off-camera lighting, but he still does a great job explaining how flash photography works.  Neil Van-whatshisface also has a decent blog here:

http://neilvn.com/tangents/

[Kolourl3lind]

Yes I kind of have a grip on the the 3 wisemen but 4th old guy seems to bring all the boos that makes the other 3 act weird. Thanks for the link. I will study up.