Digital Photography 101

Instructor: Ron Lacey

September, 2004 at LVS on Line

Other LVS courses taken

Week 4 is about using flash with a digital camera. Actually, not just using the flash, but controlling it. That is a problem I have wanted to be solved for a long time! I love taking low light photos, with tiny lights aglow or soft room light creating an ambience around a table or whatever. Take the photo, the flash goes off, and everything is caught in the glare or the tiny twinkling lights don't twinkle any more...they are lost to the flash.

You cannot say I didn't try to learn about exposure compensation, aperture, fill flash and flash control...I shot , according the numbers in my file browser for week 4, 761 images!!! There are some things in my house I don't even want to look at anymore! But, again, I learned a lot about the camera and controlling the light it gave out or let in in order to show as closely as possible the true look of a scene or object...at least to my eyes.

My goal ( and I am hoping it was the one in mind for this lesson) was to capture some scenes with the right kind of light to make them seem as closely as possible to be what I was actually seeing when I photographed the objects.

The china hutch shelf with the only light being t

he string of little white lights...I am fairly happy with the fact that things are not washed in flash and the twinkling lights still glow. Looks as it really looks!

The shelf again and the twinkling of the light against the

wood is pleasing to me as is the orangey glow that I see when I really look at the shelf.

To some, this may look a

bit blown out on the left, but it is the way it really was and that is what I was after. I used the fill flash and some compensation and adjustment and metering to get the doll to be exposed and to keep the shadows the early sun was casting on the chair of the little (unfinished!) bear.

Photos of my grandchildren when they were younger, arranged on the l

amp table in the living room. The pictures have glass fronts, but are not reflecting the flash used to photograph them! I like that. More control over the flash to get what I want from it.

Again, there are only 4 photos to show here, but a lot of learning! I will get over the fact that I looked at some of these objects ( and a few other) far too many times in this process. Now I am wondering if I should have done some of the bad flash for comparison? Well, my answer, already seen enough of those! I still have them on the hard drive and they demonstrate to me just how many adjustments I had to make before I was somewhat satisfied with an image.