Turn Off Your Flash | 31 Days of Photo Tips

And learn how to before you need to.

Regardless of what type of camera you have, from camera phone to professional level dSLR, in most cases, your built-in flash will not add to the quality of your images. Sometimes it’s necessary simply to get a shot in an otherwise dark room but generally creates a very harsh, flat light. It’s almost always better to either increase your ISO and aperture to accommodate the darkness if possible, create a situation with more natural light or use an external flash. (Fill flash is an exception which I may or may not write a tip on later. :) )

But there are several specific situations in which I would like to talk about turning off your flash. The first is concerts, performances, sporting events, graduations, weddings or any other situation where you’re in a darker area and seated/standing a great distance from the photo subject.

I attend concerts fairly frequently and without fail, there is someone in the crowd with their camera, flashing away. They take a photo, look at it and see the brightly highlighted back of head of the person in front of them and pure blackness up on the stage. So they take another photo. And another. And the same thing keeps happening.

The thing about light is that it’s subject to the Inverse Square Law which means that the intensity of the light decreases rapidly as it gets farther from its source. Light that is twice as far away is 1/4 the intensity. Light that is 4 times as far is 1/16 the intensity and so on.

To prove that I have no future in infographics, I have made this handy little diagram for you.

What this means is that light spreads out and gets weaker/dimmer as it gets farther away from its source. Think about holding up a flashlight in the dark and the triangular shape the light makes as it spreads away.

And what THAT means is that your flash is not reaching the stage from where you’re standing and all it’s doing is annoying the heck of the people standing around you. Learn how to turn it off.

……….

The other situation is when you’re shooting through glass, like at the zoo. Shooting into glass with a flash will give you a bright, white reflection and nothing else. Again, you’ll want to turn your flash off. Put your camera up close to the glass to avoid other reflections and hold it as steady as possible to get a clearer shot but don’t use your flash.

(This guy gets sad when you flash him.)

All of these situations above can be difficult to get a crisp shot in because of the low light. Some of the things that can help are shooting at a wider aperture (smaller number), increasing your ISO (“film” speed) and steadying your camera as much as possible.

Different cameras have different methods of turning off the flash. If you’re using a dSLR in one of the program modes (any mode with a picture), you can generally just push down the flash when it pops up. You can also switch to aperture priority (AE), shutter priority (TV) or Manual modes which will allow you to control your own settings without automatic flash.

On a compact camera, the flash control is usually done through the menu settings. Some cameras have a flash button built in, some require a step or two through the menu first.

The graphic above shows the three common flash statuses. In automatic, the flash will fire when the camera thinks it needs to. In the on status, it will fire with every shot. In the off status, it won’t fire at all.

Figuring out how to turn off your flash when you’re in the dark, surrounded by people and missing whatever important event you’re hoping to capture photos of can be flustering. If you don’t know how to turn off your flash easily, go grab it now (and maybe the manual, too) and figure it out so you’ll be ready the next time you need to do it.

[The concert photos above are from the March 2011 Girl Talk show in Minneapolis. If you're interested in music photography, you can view some of my work here.]

Today’s Suggested Topic:

Burst of Color
Bright or bold, capture some great color.

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