Originally posted by luckylu Hi all so my new venture into DSLR has brought me to another learning curve and another quest for advice. I have a 14 month old grandson and when he comes around I love just picking up my K 70 and taking pics of him playing around and having fun also some quick portraits nothing posed or set up. So I have used the on board flash and don't ever seem to get the same result however his skin tone is usually really pale and overexposed. I tend to use it with the 18-50mm kit lens which came with the camera and also have the 40mm 2.8 xs and 55-300 plm however indoor its the first 2 I tend to use.
So my question is. Is it worth investing into a flash which sits on the hotshoe and which one do you recommend.
Ideally 1. A flash which doesn't upset the balance of the K-70 so will not fall over if I put it down
2. One where I do not have to rely on jumping through loads of menus to get a good shot
3. will actually perform better than the on board one and is not too big
4. Knows which lens I have in and adjusts accordingly
I have seen a 2nd hand Metz 48 AF- at around £70 but is there anything smaller out there which you reckon meets my needs and has a little potential for me to experiment with for fill in flash outdoors and indoors too later on.#
I know the ISO performance is brilliant on the K-70 but would rather use a 200-400 ISO call me old school. I have an old Vivitar and smallish bounce flash but don't like the balance of the camera and the hotshoe connection aint brilliant any thoughts appreciated.
I'd recommend the Godox TT350-P. It's small form factor so it won't upset your camera (though I honestly don't think even the bigger flashes will), it's inexpensive and works in PTTL mode.
I'm still a bit new to flash myself but, you can shoot in shutter priority mode and use slower shutter speeds. The slower speed will allow the ambient light to brighten the room and when you focus on (and meter on) your subject, the TTL function will light it appropriately.
The reason your pictures look bad at this point is two fold. One was already mentioned in that the room behind is not being lit well. This can be a good or bad thing depending on your desired outcome. Sometimes it's good to isolate the subject but I don't think that's what you are going for. The second reason is that direct light from a flash is harsh. It's a lot of light coming from a very small source. It's unflattering. There are some really easy ways to overcome this. The way I do it is by using a diffusing cap (which came with my TT350-P) and tilting it almost vertical so the light is both diffused by the cap and is also bouncing off the ceiling. The (mildly) softer and indirect (bounced off ceiling) makes for a more pleasing light source. That coupled with the slower shutter speed allowing the ambient light to fill the room makes for nicer pictures I find.
Some of the best advice is found in the flash subsection of this forum. Nearly everything I know about flash, I learned there.
Good luck and enjoy. Flash adds a whole new layer to photography.