Overexposed insect

obviously this spider is overexposed from the flash. if i didnt use the flash it would come out blurred because of the low light + wind.. whats the correct way to use the flash in this type of night shot? i'm only using the builtin flash, would getting one of those addon flashes and trying to bounce the flash work? (only heard the term "bounce the flash".. have no idea what it means :P other than the flash is bouncing off something...)

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same thing, just closer focus..

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An external flash would help a bit not only because you can bounce it, but because you can also control the intensity of the flash. "Bouncing" a flash usually means swiveling the flash upward so that it points toward a ceiling and "bouncing" the flash into the subject. This is one way that photographers keep from having "red eye" in their pictures.

Since this was taken outside there probably isn't anything to bounce the flash off of. If you have a external flash you could try pointing it up and bouncing it off of a piece of white paper or cardboard or cloth even.

Additionally you could even use a flashlight and the white cardboard/paper as a reflector.

Bouncing the flash is really of no value since, in this scenario, the camera system is attempting to expose for the background which is farther away. Whether the flash is set to shoot straight on or bounce is of no consequence when the automatic exposure system of your camera is attempting to gather light for a larger object. The spider represents such a small area of the image that the flash exposure system cannot discern that a sizable subject exists from which to measure the rebounding light when the shot is taken.

The solution is to compensate the flash exposure in your camera menu settings. You can set the flash exposure toward the underexposure side; i.e. dial in -2 stops, for example. The exposure will drop accordingly. In addition, you can go into manual mode to further control exposure versus the amount of power emanating from the flash. If you find that you cannot control the flash level to a low enough level for closeup work, you can add a neutral density filter to the lens to further knock down the light while setting the flash compensation to a minus value. If you don't have any ND filters, a polarizer is an automatic 2 stop attenuator. Hope this helps.