Sorry if this ls late to help you with your assignment, but I just joined the group. Thought I'd pass on a few tips for you anyway.
There are several problems when shooting with flash under low light conditions. The one that, I'm sure, most of us have encountered is "red eye." In low light the iris of the human eye opens wider to let more light reach the rods (the nerve cells in the back of the eye). When you shoot light directly into that opening, you wind up illuminating the blood vessels in the retina, and thus you get "red eye."
To minimize this effect, you can do several things. One is to get the flash unit off the camera (i.e. don't have it attached to the hot shoe). You need to invest in a PC cord to attach the flash to the camera, but this will allow you to move the unit up and off to an angle so that you're not shooting the light directly into the eye. (Some of the higher end digital cameras can be paired with flash units with wireless TTL.) Secondly, you can bounce the flash off the ceiling (do this especially if you don't have a PC cord and have to have the flash on the hot shoe). This diffuses the light, and the softer light is usually more pleasant for photographing people than direct flash is. Just make sure that the ceiling is white or a neutral color. If the ceiling has been painted some wild color and you bounce the light into it, you'll turn the person's skin that same color. Lastly, if your flash unit or camera has a button to use for a pre-flash, hit it jsut before taking the photo. This sends a small pulse of light into your subject's eyes and causes the iris to constrict so that you're less likely to see the blood vessels in the back of the eye.
Good luck with the assignment, pixkk.
posted by pixkk
8 months ago
If you do have a wall that is too colorful to bounce off of (think green or red or blue) you can bounce flash off a piece of white foam board which will work just fine. IT can be useful to reflect light to the sides and even behind the subject if needed. Also think about where other sources of light are coming from (ambient light). Finally a diffuser can be useful. Many flash units have one attached, to spread the light rather than concentrate it in one space. In a pinch, any sort of transluscent plastic can work, but covers can be purchased pretty easily.
1/60th is on the slow end of the usual shutter speed, so bounce is particularly useful. Oh, experiment if you can before you pose your subject. Take shots and look for bright spots (assuming you have digital) and adjust your flash accordingly.
Hope this helps. I don't possess this vast amount of knowledge, but have had my own problems with flash and went back and studied to find out what I was doing wrong. I don't have the cable yet to operate the flash separately, so I depend more on bounce to avoid the pitfalls of direct flash.
We haven't got to bounce flash or fill in flash yet. Our next assignment is to shoot the same subject at 1/60, 1/15 and 1/4 to see the difference in the ambient light that is in the background. Should be interesting!
It might also be useful to check the histogram for your photo and adjust the flash EV values based on what the histogram shows. Too dark add plus EV flash values. They are probably marked in 1/3 stop increments. If you're blowing the highlights use minus flash ev values. These values are in the camera menu
