Please note i am a beginner.I have recently bought a 550ex secondhand for my 50e(it was a bargain). The flash didn't come with any reading material so i'm slightly in the dark. With christmas approaching, i am wanting to take natural looking portraits of kids opening their presents. I tried a test roll of film (fuji superia 400) using the camera on P mode and a 75-300mm lens(usually at 100-135 range) mostly my results wern't to flash. . The colours of my print's were slightly washy looking and some had a dear in a spot light look to them. Someone sugested i buy a reflector to aim the flash up and bounce it onto the subject.Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

-- Tom Knobloch (emailtomk@yahoo.com), December 01, 2000

Answers

Tom, this seems like the kind of technique question favoured by the Photo.net forum, may I suggest that you also post your question there (http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=23) as you might get more and faster response. (Note: I'm not implying that the Photo.net forum is better than this one, but this forum caters specially to questions relating to camera equipment while the Photo.net forum caters to photo techniques.)

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), December 01, 2000.

Tom: This flash features a head that will TILT as well as SWIVEL, which means that one can "BOUNCE" the flash off of a white ceiling (assuming the ceiling is not too high) in order to obtainmore natural and non-harsh lighting. Correctly deploy the flash's diffuser panel to the "catch-light" position when "bouncing" to give a little "sparkle" to the eyes of your subject. The concept of bounced flash is important to unerstand (and utilize), as it usually eliminates "red-eye", and often provides the most pleasing lighting for indoor, home photography. Also try shooting slide film, and experiment with using -1/2 to -1 stops of flash exposure compensation when bouncing flash. Also, incandescent light bulbs can add a very pleasing "warm" look to bounce-flashed photos.

-- kurt heintzelman (heintzelman.1@osu.edu), December 01, 2000.

Sorry for the typos--my keyboard is in need of replacement!

-- kurt heintzelman (heintzelman.1@osu.edu), December 01, 2000.

Excellent advice on bouncing the flash off the ceiling if you can tilt and swivel your flash head. You could also place a white card (business card) on the flash head (not cover it, but facing and parallel to the subject) to lighten up some of the shadows underneath the eyes, nose, and chin on your bounce flash operation. Try using slower shutter speeds of around 1/30th or 1/60th to allow background light in.

-- Ron Gregorio (gregorio@ksc.th.com), December 01, 2000.