The Merits of Flash

The point I raised in the MX-1 thread was "on-camera flash kills atmosphere" - and personally I much prefer to use available light, retaining the colours and shadows rather than spilling bland light all over a scene. Especially the flat lighting from the on-camera or in-camera flash units.

Studio flash is something else, and that can be used to create whatever lighting we want, but flat, from-the-camera-position light does not appeal.

Some may disagree....:

I've done little flash or studio work but I agree. Recently, while trying to get something for the "Food, glorious food Competition", I ended up with off camera flash to produce depth and shadow. Even tilting and turning the 540 on the camera seemed to leave the image flat. On board flash is OK for holiday snaps in dark rooms

John i have not read your post regarding the MX-1 in relation to on camera flash. However, I just wanted to raise a point about off camera flash? Balancing off camera flash and ambient can create some great images when the light is controlled and modified to define areas within an image. I guess the point I am trying to make is about giving off camera flash a try. rather than using on camera flash which is often not so appealing.

Sometimes the ambient lighting in a non-studio situation *requires* the use of a flash. The choice is then either the on-board flash or, usually, an external unit with a tilt head which you can bounce off a ceiling/wall etc. The latter gives much nicer results. Bland perhaps, but natural looking.

I'm looking for some available light examples where flash could have been used:
Pentax I-10


K-5 and 70mm f/2.4

I think flash has its place, I can work with or without, it's knowing when to flash or not that makes the difference.

John, the lack of hotshoe on the MX-1 means you cannot even fit a hotshoe-pc socket adaptor to allow any use of external flash. I have an extensive range of old thyristor flashes which can be triggered from the pc socket on my k5 or by using a low power flash/bounce flash on camera and optical triggers. I also have a small Metz 24 unit which can be used for fill in or bounce (and can be gelled for fill flash with tungsten light) which is not wasy to do with a built in flash. Now whilst 99% of my shots do not use flash, to leave a hotshoe off of a "serious" compact camera seems a bit daft to me.
Of course with my SLR's I can use the built in flash as master or controller for an external p-ttl flash (in my case a Metz 4maybe the MX-1 flash can do the same

I can't see why not

Knowing when to flash or not isn't much help when you're tied to the onboard though. Effectively you don't have a choice, unless you are just using it for fill light, or are prepared to monkey around with a lightscoop. Unless you happen to like the full frontal flash look...

Seems to me this is a classic case of the importance of a missing feature on a Pentax camera being diminished...

Let me just say the lack of a hotshoe on this lovely new camera wouldn't put me off buying it, but it is a slightly puzzling omission.

I took this thread as a new one to remove it from the MX-1 discussion. It was intended to be stand-alone and I thought the discussion of flash or no-flash for low light work was interesting in its own right. So no hidden agenda I'm afraid.

So as far as I was intending it's got nothing to do with what the MX-1 has or hasn't got, that will sort itself out elsewhere!

I was hoping some interesting examples of both techniques might be posted, so there's still the opportunity to do that....please let's see some.

Natural light is the best when there's enough of it. Failing that, bounced flash is usually the next best option. Direct, on-camera flash is a last resort, only suitable for snapshots.

Depending on what you're doing, direct flash can be the FIRST option you should consider.

Take my work in club photography for example:

1) You're in an environment where the lighting is changing not only rapidly but unpredictably, especially where sound-to-light tracking on the DMX is enabled.
2) Typically, your strongest light source will be BEHIND your subject, so if you crank your exposure to get their face correctly exposed, the background will be almost completely blown out, usually with a nasty halo encroaching on their face.
3) Considering how dark it is, you're going to either be shooting wide open, and therefore with an effective DOF of anything from 3-15cm depending on distance from subject and what sort of lens you've got; this is almost always unsuitable.
4) If you're not shooting wide open, you have to crank your ISO therefore increasing noise to, quite frankly, nasty levels.
5) People don't stay still when you're taking their photo in a club, ever. So you need the shortest shutter speed possible. Unless you've got an f1.4 lens and don't mind shooting at 6400, typically your shutter speed is going to be long enough that you wind up with a ridiculously blurred shot.

The above reasons make available light photography COMPLETELY unacceptable in that environment.

Reasons bounce flash doesn't work either:

1) The ceiling is usually 10-15 feet above you, weirdly shaped/has weird obstacles across it like pipes/lighting rigs etc. You're talking a 30 feet distance between flash head and subject, through said obstacles.
2) You're, what... 2 feet from your subject? Maybe 3 if you're doing a full length shot? The virtually perpendicular angle of a bounced flash would cast some seriously nasty shadows on your subject's face.
3) You have to move a lot; and alternate between portrait and landscape orientation frequently. I've tried the whole flip bracket nonsense, but quite frankly it's just not manageable in that environment.

With the above in mind, I've decided to start using a ring flash at work from now on. It should let me get nice and close to my subjects, with a much more controllable level of power (due to the smaller GN, at the moment I'm shooting at 1/128 or 1/64th power, with no scope to go lower unfortunately.

I'm sure that in those specific conditions you do need flash mdc. It's what the customer expects and needs, a fairly flat, even representation of themselves.

I'd be tempted to use a flash bracket though, to move the flash away from the lens axis, and if flash power is a problem use a lower powered flash or a diffuser on the more powerful one.

As for ring flash, that makes for very flat lighting indeed and might look a little odd for portraits. Also, the highlights in the eyes will look strange and I wonder what your customers will think of that. Where ring flash is used in intra-oral photography, often a small auxiliary flashgun is added to one side, to ensure that there's a nice highlight on the teeth. Ring flash alone is very textureless.

What do you think?

The most useless part on my K5 is the inbuilt flash. With the enormous sensitivity now available and with the anti shake feature, I can not see much use for it. Everything looks nasty and flat and hard when taken with the inbuilt flash.
Without it, the camera looks would also improve.
I have taken shots in a goldmine tunnel with just a few incandescent lamps operating. The pictures looked like a tunnel in a goldmine with just a few incandescent lamps operating. The background was still visible and showed the length of the tunnel. When using the inbuilt flash,
the walls close enough appeared just about white and the contours missing. The background black and dead.
Regards, Horst

Thanks, I think I will I use the onboard flash of my pentax/samsung and canon cameras all the time, however, I have no interest in photographing people or building interiors etc. I get a lot of my joy from close up photography outdoors in all kinds of light. I diffuse the onboard flash and use it to balance with daylight or sometimes to be the only source. Onboard flash is very convenient as I'm too lazy to carry and use an external flash. The real beauty of compacts with onboard flash is that they sync at all shutter speeds which helps me even further in bright conditions. I say cameras need them, in fact I didn't buy one make of camera because it needed a external flash, so no sale here. My compact has a flash hot shoe but I never use it, so in a quick reference to the mx-1 they've got it right IMHO.... I wouldn't mind if they (whoever) upped the power of onboard flash either.