There are many photographers that think flash is the devil. I would agree with that to an extent – I do not think direct flash is the most flattering for any subject, and prefer to bounce my flash, via the “black foamie thing,” which can be seen here. I thought I’d post a very quick example of how flash can look so much better by bouncing it!
As a carboholic, I just love pierogies. Here is an example of how they look with direct flash. All photos were shot at f/8, 1/250 shutter speed, ISO 500. The exposure has not been adjusted in any of the files.
Not a bad picture. Nice sharpness. The subject is bright. But I find the shiny parts on the plate distracting. I was standing directly above the food and I bounced this flash into the ceiling, which means it came back directly at the subject. In some cases, this looks great, but in this case, I’m too close to the food for it to look subtle.
In the next picture, I turned my flash head to the right and bounced it off our white shutters. The color is important – if you are bouncing off, say, a red surface, your photos will have a red cast.
I think this picture is far more pleasing. The reason for that is the photo has dimension. There is an apparent contrast between light and shadows, which makes the food look more realistic. This mimics the look of soft, natural light, which is a photographer’s favorite light!
I then turned the flash head to the left wall that was about 10 feet away from me. Here’s the result:
Not so good, huh? The wall is too far away at my aperture, which means the flash can’t output enough light to properly expose the subject at this distance. You’ll also notice the image starts to look grainy. I shoot with a 7D, and it’s pretty darn good at handling grain, so long as my exposure is correct. If I were to increase the exposure of this picture in Photoshop, the grain would be really bad.
Now, I could have opened up my aperture to properly light this. I might have started at f/5.6 and work my way from there to find the proper exposure. But it turns out the closer wall worked a lot better for me, so I’ll stick with that photo :)
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