[BPT]

I dont use flash largely due to what I like to shoot not really needing flash. When I do landscapes I would need one hell of a large flash lol. And I also like animals, a flash would probably spook them though not in all cases. I dont profess to be greatly skilled but hey I enjoy it

You are right, of course, the pics are "dark" and lack "punch" the problem is those are exactly the qualities that prompted me to push the shutter release in the first place.

Flash would have destroyed the first pic I think, the second one I think could have benifited quite nicely from flash. Though if it doesnt float your boat it is perfectly acceptable to not use flash

[Mike Cash]

The discussion has wandered away from the original question, but this being the internet that is to be expected.

It has nothing to do with the relative merits of the use of or eschewing of flash. As has been pointed out, they both have their places. It all boils down to whether a person has the choice of using flash skillfully or not. After all, we are all available light shooters. But people who think "flash" means raising the pop-up or blasting straight ahead with a shoe-mount haven't really learned how to use flash, in essence have no option other than shooting with available light, and can hardly be said to have made a conscious choice to be an available light shooter.

When you have two options available to you....you can choose.

When you have only one....you can not.

Therefore the only people who can cop an attitude about being "genuine" available light shooters are those who could skillfully do the scene/situation with flash if they wanted to (or it was allowed) but are going with available light instead. The person who hasn't learned to do it and has no option other than to go with available light to begin with sounds silly going on about being an available light shooter.

I have no problem with people who don't use flash, don't need flash, and really don't care to learn. I don't use it myself 99% of the time. But don't go acting superior about not having a skill. That's just ridiculous.

[Venturi]

There are plenty of photographic styles and environments that do not lend themselves to portable light sources (flash or otherwise), and if the body of your photographic work falls into those areas then fantastic. One less thing getting in the way of LBA. And I don't feel any disdain towards anyone that consciously chooses not to use their own light.

I have no problem with people who don't use flash, don't need flash, and really don't care to learn. I don't use it myself 99% of the time. But don't go acting superior about not having a skill. That's just ridiculous.

The problem with flash photography is there's so much bad use of it that it has developed quite a stigma surrounding it. After all, if you peruse enough family photo albums you'd be in your rights assuming that on-camera strobes are secretly producing an army of red-eyed, squinty eyed, toothy, pissed off mutants that leap out of the darkest shadows and eat small children.

As I eluded to in my earlier post here, I was in that camp until last summer. I grew up getting a tan every xmas morning thanks to the bazillion candle power SunGun my dad used with the 8mm movie camera, so I was pre-programmed to a degree to dislike portable lights/flashes on face value. There was another aspect of financial origin as well - if I'm spending money on lighting I can't spend it on "real" camera gear. Light should free after all, right?

One of the earlier replies talked about learning to use available (ambient) light is an art. I believe that learning to use and understand light - all forms and sources of light - that's the real art form. And if you can learn to understand and manipulate a 1 millisecond burst of light to produce pleasing results then working with constant light sources theoretically at the least just got one heck of a lot easier.

In the vocabulary of art and light, I know I'm still working with crayons and a big chief tablet. But...

"Don't argue with my Daddy! Dig it?"

[drewdlephone]

I learned flash the hard way; with a Vivtar manual flash unit and my Spotmatic F and no prior experience, and four rolls of mangled film at a rock concert. I'm not a huge flash fan, however; I've seen very few pictures where a flash was used and it made the picture better while keeping it looking natural. If that's not what you're after, then flash is fine, but I'd rather work the available light, and in studios, use flood lamps as opposed to strobes.

Then there's that whole "blinded bat" look people get when you take their picture with a flash. Even models do this after sitting in front of your camera for half an hour while you snap away.

The only exception to my opinion is fill in flash. If I put a sock on my Vivitar, I get some nice fill-in when the available light won't do.

[alohadave]

I learned flash the hard way; with a Vivtar manual flash unit and my Spotmatic F and no prior experience, and four rolls of mangled film at a rock concert. I'm not a huge flash fan, however; I've seen very few pictures where a flash was used and it made the picture better while keeping it looking natural. If that's not what you're after, then flash is fine, but I'd rather work the available light, and in studios, use flood lamps as opposed to strobes.

Then there's that whole "blinded bat" look people get when you take their picture with a flash. Even models do this after sitting in front of your camera for half an hour while you snap away.

The only exception to my opinion is fill in flash. If I put a sock on my Vivitar, I get some nice fill-in when the available light won't do.

Go to Strobist and read Lighting 101 and 102.

[shutterpuppy]

Love my DA 50mm f 1.4 Nuff Said

[wildman]

It all boils down to whether a person has the choice of using flash skillfully or not. After all, we are all available light shooters. But people who think "flash" means raising the pop-up or blasting straight ahead with a shoe-mount haven't really learned how to use flash, in essence have no option other than shooting with available light, and can hardly be said to have made a conscious choice to be an available light shooter.

When you have two options available to you....you can choose.

When you have only one....you can not.

Mike,
isn't that being a bit unrealistic and impractical?

That's like telling a women she hasn't made a "conscious choice" to be a mother or not unless she has first had a child and only then is she capable of making a choice if she wants to be a mother or not.

Come to think about it that sounds like a good idea. I should have married all the women in my life and after I was done with them choose the one I liked best. Would be a bit expensive and time consuming though.

I don't have to spend my limited time and money first mastering Canon, Nikon and Pentax to be able to choose which brand best suits my purposes.

Nor do I have to spend my limited time and money mastering flash technique before I can make a reasonable informed choice that flash does not suit my purposes.

---

Last edited by wildman; 02-10-2009 at 03:16 AM.

[Mike Cash]

Mike,
isn't that being a bit unrealistic and impractical?

Not in the slightest. I thought it rather logical and fairly well-presented.

That's like telling a women she hasn't made a "conscious choice" to be a mother or not unless she has first had a child and only then is she capable of making a choice if she wants to be a mother or not.

Forgive me, but that is a poor analogy. You start it with a choice of being or not being a mother, and end up with a choice of wanting or not wanting to be a mother. A woman who has had a child can't then decide to revert to non-motherhood.

A person who has learned to use flash can then choose to use it or to not use it. A person who has not learned to use flash can not make that choice. By default he is an available light shooter. It is fine to not do something, but it is silly to brag about choosing to not do something one doesn't know how to do to begin with. Makes about as much sense as an illiterate man bragging about never reading anything.

I don't have to spend my limited time and money first mastering Canon, Nikon and Pentax to be able to choose which brand best suits my purposes.

Irrelevant "straw man" point.

Nor do I have to spend my limited time and money mastering flash technique before I can make a reasonable informed choice that flash does not suit my purposes.

The internet has taught me that no post can be so carefully phrased that somebody can't manage to read what they thought you said rather than what you actually said.

I said I don't have a problem with people choosing not to use flash or not to learn to use flash. I only said it is silly when some people put on airs of superiority about not exercising a skill they don't have in the first place. If you don't want to learn to use flash....for any reason whatsoever you may have....that's fine-n-dandy with me. I already said as much.

[simons-photography]

I hate flash it just ruins the picture, when I take a group picture for my rotaract club its generally a long table which I am at one end of, so I have devised this method: I use a GND upside down to counteract the non linearity of flash to get a more natural image

[stewart_photo]

I selected "unwilling to learn" in the poll solely as encouragement to those who flatly refuse to even consider flash photography. While available light photography is certainly useful and worthwhile (which is why we all use it), only a very close-minded person (in my book), not a snob, would so completely ignore the creative possibilities offered by flash photography (creative possibilities, not just the occasional need of flash).

Of course, most working pros have to learn both existing and flash very well to be at all successful. That reality has made me quite comfortable with flash photography, opening doors to much experimentation and fun (painting with flash, balancing flash subjects with ambient lit city scenes, balancing flash subjects against flash painted scenes, etc).

stewart

[Mike Cash]

b) There are different styles of flash photography, and having a dark background is either a sign of inexperience setting up a flash shot, or a stylistic choice.

From today:

Both of the above are flash photos, using a single AF200T.

As as regards the mention of single strobes producing strong shadows, that too is either a sign of inexperience or a stylistic choice.

No strong shadows on this single flash shot:

I think too many people base their prejudices against flash on examples of poor use of flash. That would make as much sense as deciding to hate photography altogether based on nothing but your Aunt Gertie's vacation shots done with the lens cap on or her finger in every shot.

[m8o]

That 2nd shot is fantastic. I'm curious... So the flash unit was in-front of & to the left of you in that shot? About how high was it, and was the light diffused?

[Mike Cash]

That 2nd shot is fantastic. I'm curious... So the flash unit was in-front of & to the left of you in that shot? About how high was it, and was the light diffused?

Thank you very much. I would be very happy to tell you about the extremely complicated setup for getting a shot like that.....except that in truth it is as simple as rolling off a log. I took a photo of the setup for it:

That's the whole shebang, right there. One old $10 AF200T flash mounted on a travel tripod. I fired it with a Flash Waves radio trigger, but there are other much cheaper alternatives for doing it.

It was done at f16. The first shot was done through an umbrella (notice the much softer shadows) at about f8. If I had gone out with it in mind to take a shot demonstrating there doesn't have to be a sharp difference between the foreground and background I would have turned the power down a notch on the first shot and had one stop less difference between the two. You probably wouldn't have been able to tell that flash was used at all.

[Nesster]

I've been following this discussion with interest... I've noted the tinge of pride in the use of 'available light' photographer in the past... and the counterbalancing 'strobist' equipment mysteries.

Why would 'available light' carry a tinge of superior attitude? For one, this term has been used by the photo industry for decades and decades to sell equipment and film. The supermodels of the lens world are the ultra fasts, followed by the cheescake ultra longs and ultra wides...

Now this goes back to when film speeds were slow and flash was bulbs or the early electronics... when good lighting, even flash, was a professional or studio-like proposition. Even in the '70s, photo instruction covered 'available light' and 'studio' but as far as I recall nothing about getting the flash off the camera... The most the magazines talked was about bounce flash (you could sell the suckers another piece, because it has bounce...)

So if strobism has become entirely practical and easier to do, why is it still a fringe thing? For one, who makes the money in this? Can the manufacturers really sell you another p-TTL bell and whistle when you're looking at soft boxes and umbrellas? Hell, that p-TTL wonder doesn't even easily cater to holding one in your hand, tethered to the hot shoe... Which it ought to, right out of the box.

There's nothing wrong with the straight-ahead crowd (though we make fun of them as Canon and Nikon wonks ): stick the latest zoom on the latest camera and point it and shoot. Throw a flash on top, repeat. Buy the more later zoom and repeat. But that approach seems to leave skills unexplored... (Nikon caters most to the flash users by the way. Almost enough to have made me consider the brand.)

We're more sophisticated and self driven than that. So it's time to include illumination technology in this sophistication. And that's not to say: always do this or don't do this! That's like saying: always use the xx lens in this situation and the yy in that. That we recognize as silly thinking --- sure one lens may make the shot more convenient or easy to get, but if you don't have that one lens, surely you can still get the shot?

[Mike Cash]

I hate flash it just ruins the picture

Similar to the expression "Guns don't kill people; people with guns kill people" we can say "Flash doesn't ruin pictures; people who don't know what they're doing with flash ruin pictures."

If I hadn't just shown you how I did it, I sincerely doubt you would have ever guessed flash was used on that photo. I took it seated on the ground and with the camera bumping up against the umbrella.

when I take a group picture for my rotaract club its generally a long table which I am at one end of, so I have devised this method: I use a GND upside down to counteract the non linearity of flash to get a more natural image

That's some very clever thinking and I admire you for coming up with it. If the people in the photo don't mind you putting it on the net I'd like to see an example of how it works.