Getting Poor Results With Built-In Flash

Moviesla

Senior Member
I purchased the Nikon D5500 last February and am doing well in regular daylight shots including low level available light pictures. BUT, I'm struggling with most of my flash pictures using the built-in flash. First most of my normal flash shots are washed out; however, adjusting the Flash Compensation back to -2.0 helps. But why do I have to make that constant adjustment? Second there are many flash pictures that look poor, and I don't know why. Attached is a typical example: The camera was mounted on a tripod plus using the 10-second delay because I'm in the picture. The result is terrible. By looking at this picture do you see anything I'm doing wrong?
 

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WayneF

Senior Member
Welcome to the forum, and thanks for posting the image, so we can see what you see. Unfortunately, there is no Exif data in the image you posted, and Exif data tells a lot, ISO, aperture, shutter speed... But we can guess.

You are using quite high ISO and/or slow shutter speed, which eagerly lets in all the orange incandescent light, and it is orange. That table lamp is really lighting up the room. We look at our pictures, but we have to learn to actually see them (to examine details that are there to be seen). Notice the guy in the red shirt. His face is very bright on his right side - the lamp is of course doing that, intensely bright (at the very high ISO), and then the flash is only adding a little fill. And the others too, to some extent, that lamp is registering well in the very high ISO. So you have a tremendous amount of ambient light, caused by automation turning Auto ISO sky high. Probably don't even need the flash here. :)

If you are using camera Auto mode, it turns on Auto ISO, and no way to turn it off. Or otherwise maybe you turned it on if in the other modes.

The little internal flash is tiny, and ISO 200 or 400 does help it, but it doesn't need ISO 2400 or 3200, etc.

The high ISO is allowing normal regular exposures from incandescent, regardless if you use the flash or not. Then adding the TTL flash adds another normal flash exposure. Two proper exposures added together can be 2x exposure, or overexposure. Backing the flash off is one way, but backing the ISO off (the ambient) is another way.

Adjusting Flash Compensation is the way we control the automatic TTL flash exposure. Kudos for understanding and doing that part.. so many of us simply just won't bother to learn it. So I think there is great hope. :)

As a first step, to see a similar indoor shot, try one time to setting Auto ISO off. You cannot turn it off in Auto mode, so try camera A or M mode (then you can). The TTL flash is still automatic in M mode, and M mode is often used indoors, so we can make the ambient be insignificant (because we are using flash instead).

Set maybe ISO 400, which should allow the little flash to do f/8 at up to ten feet. So f/5.6 should work well then, at less than maximum flash power. A mode will always use 1/60 second shutter (speaking of flash indoors). If in M mode, faster shutter like 1/125 or 1/200 will shut more of the ambient (without affecting the flash exposure), but the important thing at first is cranking ISO down to reasonable levels.

Then when and if TTL is not just right, flash compensation tweaks it in.

The flash reflections in the glass cabinet are avoided by shooting at a slightly different angle, not straight into the cabinet, so the reflections don't come back to the camera lens.
 
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rocketman122

Senior Member
I purchased the Nikon D5500 last February and am doing well in regular daylight shots including low level available light pictures. BUT, I'm struggling with most of my flash pictures using the built-in flash. First most of my normal flash shots are washed out; however, adjusting the Flash Compensation back to -2.0 helps. But why do I have to make that constant adjustment? Second there are many flash pictures that look poor, and I don't know why. Attached is a typical example: The camera was mounted on a tripod plus using the 10-second delay because I'm in the picture. The result is terrible. By looking at this picture do you see anything I'm doing wrong?


you have tungsten lighting. you can either overcome the yellow by flashing the scene or not flashing and adjusting kelvin directly in the camera to make the color more neautral. this has nothing to do with the exposure. just the yellow color cast in the picture. you have enough ambient light, that much is clear and there is no sign of flash use. it could be the flash fired but the large amount of ambient light in the picture overpowered the minute amount of flash. the ambient light gave the majority of the exposure here and the flash hardly made a contribution to the exposure. seems to me there was a longish exposure through shutter as it isnt tack sharp. and for sure high iso, because there is a lot of grain. actually there is no eveidence of flash at all. not even catch lights.

it says youre a semi pro. im sure youve dealt with these situations before?

why the constant adjustments? cause the metering sucks. nothing has advanced with it. I will say this. even since the F5 in the film days which it boasted some amazing breakthrough tech (like COLOR matrix metering and actually having 50000 actual scenes in it for perfect expsoure)in the flash/camera metering, and till to date, cameras havent advanced a single bit when it comes to proper exposure/metering. the so called advanced 3d matrix ballanced fill flash will underexpose at the slightest hint of anything bright in the scene. it doesnt understand backlit it doesnt understand anyone wearing dark clothes or bright clothes. its a stupid 18% grey system that doesnt recognize any scene in front of it.

I shot an afternoon wedding on friday. the event was partly indoors (dancing/bar) and the tables/food was outdoors. part shaded part sun. my fingers were tired as crap from nonstop adjust EC. its just crap. you need to read a scene and adjust accordingly. nothing has advanced.
 

J-see

Senior Member
I just used the spot tool on the grey sweater to adjust white balance. It fixes the yellow cast to a degree.

DSC_0009E.jpg

Your cam's white balance gets thrown off in these situations and you either have to adjust it before shooting or afterwards pick a neutral (grey) part in the shot and use that to correct it.
 
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Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
The way I read this shot is the flash did fire. The indications are the reflection in the china cabinet and the color change across the photo. The variation in color is caused by the flash being closer to the right side of the picture and the output to low to over come the incandescent lamp on the left.
My solution would have been to gel my hot-shoe or off camera flash and change the camera white balance to incandescent. Never tried to gel the on camera flash but it could be something to try.

Comments or corrections?
 

FastGlass

Senior Member
Yes gel the flash. Even when fixing the WB in post you still have two diff color temps in the image. One from the flash and one from the light in the scene.
 

tkhumush

New member
I am a newbie, but if i were you, first i would flip the position of the camera with the subject and vice versa.


then take a couple of shots of the subject to reach the results that i want, most probably i will be turning the flash off. oh, would fill the frame too. i don't see how the cabinet and the side lamp would add anything to this amazing family.


then shoot with the timer, run between them, and smile. :)
 

Moviesla

Senior Member
Wayne, thanks for your great reply. I'm new to this forum and yesterday was my first post and didn't realize I wasn't including enough data with my picture. About me: I would say I'm more of an advance amateur that the category they offer here of Semi-Pro. I'm now retired: 42+ years as a Kodak rep (25 calling on pro labs in the Midwest, 25 working in the motion picture industry in Hollywood). The last film camera I owned, which I loved, was the Nikon F2A using a 50mm f/1.4 plus other lens. Digital capture is slowly growing on me. My new D5500 has so many variables that it sometimes excites me and still overwhelms me. I'm slowly getting it. This flash picture problem is a typical challenge.

It sounds like you are telling me to get out of any Auto setting because I do notice the ISO is shooting way up when indoors. And I understand you recommend M mode for all indoor flash using about 1/200 shutter, f/5.6 or f/8, and setting ISO at 400. Can I assume any other adjustment would be the flash compensation setting for varying distances?

I have attached a jpeg file (if you can read it) with the data on that picture if that helps.

Again, thanks for your assistance

Stan
 

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Bourbon Neat

Senior Member
Hey Stan, welcome to the forum. "So many variables", you hit that right on the head. Your camera, the D5500, is a lil sweetie for sure, and has many good qualities. I too scored one for re-entry to this hobby.

The memories I have of using film was way simple, check the film speed, guess at metering, set shutter and aperture, compose, squeeze and drop the film for processing. That worked fine for documenting the children through their growth and achievements, in my opinion anyway. Have to admit that I took processing for granted and had no clue how someone was making my stuff look better than I had contributed.

Now that we are doing our own processing, we must learn all of those variables included in the dslr's. Getting them tuned in correctly makes a world of difference in the post processing that you will be doing in whatever software you feel comfortable with. The capture at the correct settings is the beginning, the post processing takes the image to whatever heights possible, by a competent artist. You will see my failings for sure.

There is a wealth of free information and many good advisors at this site, you will gain much here.

If you progress with your photography, you will find a weakness in the D5500 that it cannot fine tune to each individual lens. Another downer is having just one control wheel. On the up side it does 60fps video, have not used that feature yet.
 

WayneF

Senior Member
The picture data shown includes about everything Except the basics, the essentials: ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. :) Remember back in the day of the F2, cameras were manual, and we got to deal with those settings. :)

Auto mode has a big following though, all the compacts, and it is convenient, but it allows no way to control it ourself, or to learn anything. Auto users probably don't even know what ISO, shutter speed and aperture they are using (they would have no control anyway). And Auto does enable Auto ISO, which will be a problem for flash, and white balance. I'm just saying there is no probable way to improve the Auto flash picture in all that incandescent light.

The ambient indoors is dim, low level (compared to sunshine levels for photography outdoors), and generally unsuitable for photography, which is why we use flash indoors. The first thing to know about camera metering is that it meters the ambient (not the flash, the flash has not even fired yet), and adjusts the settings for the ambient, which is quite low. That means very high ISO, and wide aperture and slow shutter (for the dim ambient).

Then reach up and enable the flash (open the flash door), and the shutter speed jumps up to 1/60 second. That is NOT metered, there is nothing 1/60 second about the light, but since we are using flash, then we don't need 1/4 second or whatever slow speed it was. Then regardless of the light, the 1/60 is simply a Minimum shutter speed. It will underexpose the ambient, but we are using flash instead. We don't even care about the ambient. It's dim and out of the picture.

Except if we are stuck with the very high ISO, then it does help the ambient, brings it way up into dominance, but then adding the flash is too much. It's not really a flash picture.

The purpose of Manual mode for indoor flash is that since the ambient is too far down to even care about, then we don't worry about it. We are specifically using flash instead. We ignore the dim ambient, and set the flash power (or TTL automation does it) to make the flash right.

Since ambient metering is don't care (in dim indoors where we plan flash), Manual mode lets us bypass all the pointless ambient considerations (pointless for our flash picture), and choose a low ISO, and choose an aperture for the flash power (instead of for the ambient), and choose a shutter speed to control how much, if any, of the ambient that gets into the picture. A fast shutter speed (1/200 second) keeps most of the (very orange) incandescent out of our picture (really helpful for white balance). A slow shutter speed (1/30 second) probably is not a full ambient exposure, but it does let some significant portion of it in. Not as much as your very high ISO let in however.

Re white balance... we really cannot mix light sources, like incandescent and flash. Incandescent is orange, and flash is towards blue. That's why your back row is orange and your front row is towards blue. There is no one white balance possible that makes mixed light be all correct.

When we are determined to use orange incandescent light in our flash picture, the we use an external flash (hot shoe flash) with an orange CTO filter on it, to make its light be orange too. Then we can choose Incandescent white balance to match all the orange light.
 
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