photography website building tips: A special Report

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Eliminate Glare in Reflective Surfaces

You've probably felt the frustration of trying to take a picture of a reflective object, such as a framed painting, and getting glare. The secret is to add another flash.

 

Using two external flashes instead of your camera's built-in unit offers all sorts of new photographic possibilities. You can produce great-looking portraiture with just a couple electronic flashes and light stands. Here's another use for this capability: photographing reflective surfaces without producing glare.

 

As you know, when you try to use your camera's built-in flash to take a flash picture of, let's say, a painting on the wall, you always get a hot spot somewhere in the image. You could turn off the flash, lug everything outside, and then use natural light, but that's not always convenient either, such as when it's night. Plus, if you're shooting a lot of different objects to sell on eBay, do you really want to be standing outside with your equipment all day?

Try this method instead and work comfortably indoors. Hang your artwork on the wall and get your flashes and light stands together. For this assignment, you won't need the photo umbrella, but you will need both the flashes mounted on their light stands.

 

Raise the light stands so that the flashes are the same height as the painting, Now position one on the left and one on the right, each at 45° angles from the painting. The flashes and painting should form a triangle.

 

Mount your camera on a tripod and extend the legs so that the camera is the same height as the center of the painting. Make sure the camera is level and centered between the two flashes. Now, focus and take a picture.

 

Both flashes will go off, but amazingly, there's no light reflection in the picture! Magically, each flash cancels out the reflection from the other. You get an evenly illuminated image with no hot spots.

 

 

Place your camera so that the camera is the same height as the center of the subject and centered between the two flashes. Focus and take a picture. There’s no light reflection because each flash cancels out the reflection from the other.

 

You can also apply this technique to tabletop photography for items such as flower vases and glassware. The main thing to remember is to keep your light sources at strict 45° angles from the subject, and keep the camera centered between them.

 

 

Source: O’Reilley | Online Portfolio | Website for Photographers

 

Capture the Nighttime Mood and Leave the Red Eye at Home

Shooting with flash indoors against a dark, boring background often produces overexposed subjects with red eye. But it doesn't have to be that way.

 

Built-in camera flashes are very convenient. But they can produce deadly results when used to take pictures of people in low-light situations, such as evening parties. Aside from the plague of red eye that turns your loved ones into otherworldly demons, there's also the nuclear look? Where the subject appears to be standing next to ground zero, glowing beyond recognition

 

It doesn't have to be that way. The easiest way to increase your success rate is to get an external flash; it's just easier to control the lighting that way. But for many people, that's not practical. So, in this hack we'll look at the options for the portable digicam, and then talk about more advanced techniques with external flash. Let's start with taming the pocketable point and shoot.

 

Pocketable Party Shots

The people who design compact dig-cams realize that these cameras don't always produce great flash results at night. So, many of today's models have features designed to help you get better shots in these challenging situations. Some of these features work better than others. Here's a quick overview of what to look for and what to avoid:

 

Red Eye Reduction mode

Avoid using this setting. In theory, using Red Eye Reduction mode makes sense: shine a bright light in the subject's eyes before exposure to constrict the iris, thereby reducing the chance of reflected red eye. But it doesn't work out that way. Flashes are annoying anyway, and torturing your subject with additional flash before taking the shot tends to kill spontaneity. Plus, even after you do that, you'll often still get red eye. It's just not worth it.

 

Nighttime Flash mode

Use this setting for artistic shots. At times, using this mode might feel like trying to tame a wild cat: you think you're making progress, then it gets away from you. The thinking here is that the camera slows down the shutter speed, allowing you to capture background scenery beyond the flash range, yet the flash still goes off, illuminating subjects within 10 feet. And it usually works quite well. But things get crazy if you don't hold the camera really steady or if there's a lot of movement in the scene. So, you'll get some absolutely great shots with artistic flair, and you'll get some failures. But it's definitely worth experimenting with. This control is also referred to as Slow Synchro Flash mode.

Slow Synchro Flash mode

Source: O’Reiley | Portfolio Photography Website for Photographers | Portfolio Website