Tips for mooning and flashing people.

Another morning of waiting for a customers work to transmit on my stupid dial-up connection...country life does have at least one drawbwack...still better than driving to the city though...

Anyways...the other thread got me thinking...about when not to flash...

It amazes me to go to a concert or sporting event and see all the flashes popping. If I could say one thing to all those people it would be this:
Your little flash unit CANNOT light up the entire stadium. In fact if you think of your pocket flash like a pocket flashlight in terms of how far it'll reach. All you are doing is limiting your shutter speeds, and washing out the detail in the people sitting directlty in front of you. Face it there's always a bald guy in front of you whose head is going to give off so much glare that you might as well be shooting into the sun. Please turn your flash off, use your spot meter, and adjust your WB, shutter and iso settings to get the most of the light thats on your subject. More often than not the stage/stadium lights are plenty bright for available light shooting even if you are sitting in the dark.

Think of it this way...

you are standing outside at night. looking at the moon. Basically you're on the dark side of the planet with the sun to your back, and the moon (no lunar eclpise) is sitting out there in full sunlight. Sunny 16 rule applies. (with my 500mm f4 that means: iso 400, f16, 1/500s, (most people do not expect the moon to look like a rock with lots of craters or detail, so opening up one more stop to make it brighter and whiter is a good idea.).

Fire that same shot with your flash on and you'll get a white dot against black or grey sky because the shutter sync speed will cause over exposure.

You mean you can turn off the flash???!

I know, Iknow...it's hard to resist flashing people...but for the benefit of society..we must try to resist....

Don,

As dumb as they all are, it sure looks pretty to gaze across a stadium into that sea of twinkling lights. But image the money that's being wasted. Man, we used to create the same effect with 19 cent BIC lighters - I think -and we wern't tryin' to light up anything as far away as the stage, and all the UV filters in the world couldn't cut through that haze.
Those were the daze........

Peace.