Newbie with an A540 - help me out pls?

[Desiree_Leigh]

I got a new A540 just before Xmas and I've been playing around with it, mostly in Auto b/c with two little kids, I've had no time to learn anything about manual. So far, I like the camera, but I found that I don't quite understand how the flash works - it seems that for a lot of shots there's "too much" flash - I've tried using the SCN (Night Snapshot) mode a few times, and though I get a bit of blur, it seems like the flash is a bit more... appropriate? I don't know that I'm making any sense with this.... I'm not sure if I'm just expecting too much of my camera, or if I need to play with settings/manual modes. Anyone want to offer some help in a quick tutorial for manual modes? I'm mostly shooting indoors, and the pictures are usually of my kids (in motion, all the time!)

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/Desiree_Leigh/canon%20a540/SunsCam011.jpg
Full auto
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/Desiree_Leigh/canon%20a540/SunsCam002.jpg
Full auto
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/Desiree_Leigh/canon%20a540/newcam014.jpg
Night snapshot

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/Desiree_Leigh/canon%20a540/newcam010.jpg
Night snapshot mode

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/Desiree_Leigh/canon%20a540/newcam009.jpg

Full auto

Any help is appreciated - thanks!

- Desiree

[Olegis]

I don't find that there is "too much flash" in the pictures you posted - the images look very nicely exposed. It seems like the Auto mode really does a great job in situations when flash is needed.

[Stefan A]

I am not seeing too much flash either. But everybody has their own preferences. So, check to see if your camera has FEC - or Flash Exposure Compensation. If it does, then you set the flash to be less powerful. You will have to experiment with how much less. If it does not have FEC, you could try attaching a piece of translucent material over the flash. This will soften the lighting and make the scene less bright. Check out the lighting forum and ask about that - I am not very experienced with DIY lighting.

Stefan

tefan

[Jon]

Looks good to me, too. The only thing I see that you might want to work on (?) is the "ham" tendencies among the offspring when they see the camera (which could be a "don't take my picture" defense mechanism). :{)#

[Desiree_Leigh]

HAHAHA yeah the ham tendencies are pretty bad, especially with the little one - that great face she's giving me is accompanied by "CHEESE!", which her bigger sister taught her. Thank you everyone, I guess the problems I thought I was experiencing are in my head! (and it doesn't help that a friend has come over a few times with his Rebel and gotten some amazing shots ;) )

[DavidW]

It's not so much too much flash as possibly too little background.


A flash photograph is best thought of as two exposures in one - one with the ambient light, and one with the flash.

Even the biggest of on-camera electronic flashes will do very little to illuminate the background - the flash power falls off dramatically as the distance from the camera increases. This is why taking a flash photo along a table at a banquet using one on-camera flash leads to the people at the far end of the table being in darkness.

One way around this is to make the background exposure using ambient light, then use some flash to expose the foreground subject completely. Rather than doing that, it can be easier to find a way to use the flash to light the scene more evenly, but this is tricky with a compact where you can't bounce the flash. A slave flash can help (you can always try to point that at the ceiling), but you don't have as much control as you may need when using the kind of slave that works with a compact.

Your second shot shows the problem of not balancing ambient light and the flash exposure really well - the background is very underexposed. The last shot shows the fall-off of flash with distance fairly well.


With my SLR I'd tend to bounce the flash (off the ceiling, if it's white) to provide more diffuse and even illumination, and hope that got me out of having to use a mixture of ambient light and flash - there's also other tricks like using multiple flashes which can be done if you have the appropriate external flash equipment with the SLR. You can get optical slave flashes that work with at least some compacts (if the HF-DC1 is listed as an accessory for your camera, they should work), but you don't have as much control as with a wireless Speedlite setup (or studio flash gear) on an SLR.


Balancing flash and ambient light can be done, but it can be tricky to do well - especially as you have to pay attention to the different colour temperatures of the ambient light and the flash if you're using more than fill flash. For example, an ordinary tungsten light bulb is rather warmer - that is more yellow - than the light from your flash. You may need to put an appropriate colour correction gel over the flash to stop this being an issue. Your penultimate shot shows something of this problem - the background has something of a yellow cast compared to that in the last shot where the exposure is essentially all from flash. You could use a gel taped over the flash to drop the ~5500K of the flash down to around the ~2700K of tungsten, and use a tungsten white balance setting.

Using the 'night' setting is balancing flash and ambient light, but you can get problems with camera shake with the resulting slower shutter speed, even though the burst of flash will tend to freeze the foreground fairly well. If you want to try this, using a tripod can help.



David