EXISTING LIGHT PICTURES OFTEN MUCH MORE EXCITING!

Shut your flash off and getter better pictures!

That's a pretty bold statement but as most professional photojournalists
know - many times there is a much better picture there ready to be captured with "existing" or "available light" as we refer to it.

How many times have you been to a stage show and have seen dozens of flashes go off hundreds of feet from the stage. A ll those flashes are just lighting up the heads of the people a couple of rows ahead of them. The basic picture is being recorded by the existing light on the stage.

When I was a youngster I learned a lot of photography from my best
friend's father. Tom Mahoney was a very accomplished photographer using large format professional equipment. Tom would always laugh when he went to Niagara Falls and saw people making flash pictures of the falls. He knew the light from the flash just went a few feet out into space and then was lost. However if one had ever approached one of those people they probably would not have believed anyone because they came back with pictures after shooting them that way. How were they to know that the available light recorded on the film not the flash.

I remember taking a field trip when I was in public school to the Henry
Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. I was so taken by the picture
possibilities that I spent a big chunk of my savings on a newer camera with a built-in flash. When I got my pictures back only the ones within about twenty feet of the camera were any good and I just could not understand why. I went back to the store that sold me the camera and learned the most valuable lesson in my photographic life - the flash won't go beyond about fifteen feet!

Let's think about the basics for a moment. The tiny electronic flash unit
that is built into most small cameras is powered by small batteries. It has a capacitor that stores the energy for the flash and then is released when the shutter button is pressed. There is not a lot of light generated by the small built-in flash of a camera these days so it cannot travel very far from the camera. The trick is to know just how far that flash will go and it will probably surprise you to know that the light will probably not get to fifteen feet from the camera. Certainly you can see the light travel a lot farther from the camera than that but most camera manufacturers will state that fifteen feet is the absolute limit.

So you can see that when those people who make a flash picture of the
stage from that far away that the flash is simply adding light to the
foreground not to the main interest of the subject a hundred feet or more
away.

In order to light subjects farther than this one has to use an auxiliary
flash. When I worked for the local newspaper we had professional flash units that were comprised of two pieces, a flash head that we mounted on our camera and a huge power pack that we carried over our shoulder. In those days (1970s) the batteries cost about $50 each and there were two of them. The light was powerful though and did the job.

Today I carry two optional flash units of two different powers. When I
need a lot of light like photographing the local Santa Claus Parade I use
them because there is not very much available light.

Digital camera technology has a unique ability to record light in a
totally different way than conventional photography and with digital we have the ability to improve the pictures on the computer afterward. That is why I shoot a great many of the pictures that you see in Scope by available light rather than with flash. I am able to improve them on the computer by lightening and increasing the contrast but if I did not have the image recorded I would not be able to do anything with the images.

Another benefit of using available light is many times you are told by the
person in charge of an event, attraction, wedding etc. that "flash
photography is not permitted". Note the word "flash" in the statement. That means that you can make pictures without flash by using the existing light. This lets you get pictures when you otherwise might not be able to.

The one thing you must keep in mind is it is very important that you hold
your camera very still when using available light (in most situations).
Automatic exposure cameras will open the shutter for as long as is required to get a picture and it is not uncommon for the shutter to open at less than 1/30th of a second, the longest speed many of us consider that a person can hold a camera still.

Note that when I refer to a long shutter speed and refer to 1/30th second
you must remember that this is expressed as a fraction of a second so 1/15th is a longer exposure than 1/30th and is theoretically less.

How do you make sure your camera is held perfectly still. The answer is to remove the word "held". Support the camera against something or on something if you are sure the shutter speed will be long. During a recent family wedding I sat on the aisle and placed my small camera on the rail of the pew in front of me. I was able to make a lot of pictures with just the light that was there.

At other times I have pushed my camera into the wall at a doorway so that I could make available light pictures of a stage show. Nearly all the
pictures we have used in Scope on our Branson shows were illustrated by my pictures made with a small digital camera held on the seat edge or wall.

Sometimes too a little bit of movement by something in the pictures other than the main subject will add to the mood of the picture.

If you have a camera that will allow you to select shutter speed as a
priority then set it at 1/25th of a second. If there is enough light there
the camera will be able to make a picture with the existing light. If not it
may not allow you to make the picture and that will tell you that you have
to go to a longer shutter speed 1/15th of a second or longer.

Again the secret here is to make lots of pictures. Some will not satisfy
you and you can delete those if you are using a digital camera. However some of the will be great and that is what you were striving for.

Try existing light pictures. You may surprise yourself!