Need tips for taking portraits with the Canon PowerShot A570 IS

Hi,

I am a very happy owner of a Canon PowerShot A570 IS and I love most of the features of this great little camera. The one thing which I am having a very hard time with is taking portraits of people indoors when no sunlight is available.

My first attempt at solving this problem was to purchase an external slave flash. This did not solve the problem, alas, you can read about what happened to me on this thread in the flash forum.

Basically, I find the built in flash too powerful and my subjects end up being very white, almost corpse like. I tried fiddling around with the camera by setting the flash output to -2 (the minimum) and setting the exposure compensation at about +3/4 to +1 and I got decent results, but not always.

What I would like is to get a soft, natural, illumination of my subjects. Also, I like to use as much optical zoom as possible for portraits (ideally to the max of 4x with my camera) to get a narrower field.

Has anyone on this forum figured how to take good portraits with the A570 IS or a similar camera?

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

You could try covering the on-camera flash with a piece of tissue paper to tone that down some, and bouncing the slave off something (white ceiling, wall, or large piece of cardboard; even a silver auto windshield sunshade). But generally, the PowerShot line's not intended for studio-type portraits.

Jon wrote in post #5515003
But generally, the PowerShot line's not intended for studio-type portraits.

And that's fair enough for a compact camera for less than $150. Still, I found that covering the on-camera flash is hard to do and never lets enough light through and I have yet to find the correct settings to use the slave flash (see my problems on the threat I refer to in my original post).

So my question here is which is the 'least bad' way of taking even amateur (not studio quality) portraits?

I've moved that thread here in the Small Compact cameras forum as it's specifically about using the flash with a PowerShot and most of the people in the Flash forum don't use them. Check out the post I made there for some starter ideas on setting up and using the slave.

Could you post an example or two of what you're getting, either with the on-camera flash or with the slave? it will help us diagnose other issues that may be coming into play.

Jon wrote in post #5515241
I've moved that thread here in the Small Compact cameras forum as it's specifically about using the flash with a PowerShot and most of the people in the Flash forum don't use them.

Makes perfect sense. Thanks!

Jon wrote in post #5515241
Check out the post I made there for some starter ideas on setting up and using the slave.

I did. Thanks a lot for these excellent suggestions!

Jon wrote in post #5515241
Could you post an example or two of what you're getting, either with the on-camera flash or with the slave? it will help us diagnose other issues that may be coming into play.

Good idea. I will do that and post the results on a separate thread.