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The primary purpose of a flash is to enable you to take a photo
when there is insufficient light. It is often too dark to take a photo even in a room that looks well-illuminated
to human eyes.
A flash built into a compact camera or a similar camera has a small amount of light, and
the light cannot reach a distant object. On the other hand, if the subject is too close,
the effect of the flash will be too strong and the result will be a person with a whitish
face emerging from the darkness. We recommend that you to ask your subject to stand between
one meter and five meters from the camera. |
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If you release the shutter in the normal
settings when photographing a person in the darken, the flash will automatically operate. However, the
result is likely to be like the photo on the left in which the person standing in front comes out well,
but the background is completely dark. |
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| Using the settings as
they are |
The photo was taken by using
a flash. As it was dark, shutter speed became slow and the background came out right. However, the
person in front remained dark.
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Taking the photo with the flash turned off. |
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The photo below was taken by setting the night scene mode( ).
Both the person and the background came out well. The night scene mode is the mode in which the subject
in front of the camera is illuminated, and a slow shutter speed is used at the same time, so that the ambient
light in the background can be fully used.
The shutter speed is as slow as that of the photo above at the right taken without using
a flash because it is necessary to get the same amount of ambient light in the background
as that in the photo above at the right. |
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Using the night scene mode |
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Because the shutter speed becomes very slow in the night scene
mode, it is important to hold the camera tightly. Use a tripod if you have one. If you do not hold the
camera steady, the photo will be blurred like the one below. |
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If you look at an automatic camera, you will see that the flash
is activated even when it is not dark. When the background of the subject is bright, the front is in shadow
and becomes dark. Therefore, the flash is used for compensating for the disparity in brightness. In the
photo at the lower left, a strong shadow was created on the face of the subjects. In the photo at the lower
right, a flash was used and the shadow was reduced and the image became softer. A flash used for this purpose
is called fill-in flash (daytime synchro.) |
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Using the settings as they are |
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| Using a flash |
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Photo Shooting
