Camera Labs

I know photos of other peoples kids aren't always interesting but my niece was in a happy mood at the weekend and allowed me to take some really cute pictures of her.

The ambient lighting was coming from a lamp on a table on the right side of the room. It lit the room really nicely but it just wasn't enough for taking photos of an erratically moving child so I had to use the SB800 with two very different result;

In this photo I had my flash mounted on-camera with the diffuser and pointed directly up. It's nice but it completely removed any atmosphere provided by the lamp in the room.


Here I tried setting the flash up remotely right next to the lamp on the right and the result was a lot more preferable. It maintained the look that I was seeing through the viewfinder and just looks much, much warmer.

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My Flickr

Hi Telexstar

Am no expert, but have you tried setting the flash to fire not at its full charge but say -0.6 or -0.7 ?

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Nikon D7000 and a bunch of Nikkors

I didn't and I probably should have tried. I suspect though that it would've made little difference in the first shot other than just making it darker. The lamp was nowhere near strong enough to compete against the flash, even at -0.7.

I'll give it a go next time though.

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My Flickr

Have you tried without the flash? Seriously, my portraits work best without it. I prefer the "natural" colours, even if I have to use the tripod and/or a higher ISO setting.

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Nikon D90 + MB-D80 + SB-600 + AF-S VR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 + AF-S 35mm f/1.8 + AF 85mm f/1.8 | My photos on Flickr.

Excellent second shot, TelexStar. That's why I love the remote flash thingy

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

I didn't want to use a tripod as I needed to move around about depending on what she was doing, and it was too dark to do this without a flash. Obviously not having to use a flash would have been preferable but for this I wanted to keep the ISO low.

P.S. thanks Thomas.

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My Flickr

There are those that say, use flash infrequently and sparingly, especially the built-in flash. If possible never, unless there is no option. For example, a night shot at a motor rally.

A better option is to increase the ISO instead but not to far to introduce grain, say up to 800 max.

If you have taken this in RAW format, you can alter the white balance so that tungsten lighting does not make the image have an orange tint with post production software, e.g., LightRoom or PS CS2, to name a few.

If you use automatic settings, set the AWB to tunsten for lightbulb lighting.

Otherwise, use a white balance card and set the camera's white balance to that. That way no post production is necessary except for some creativity.

The argument:

ISO low and flash or ISO high and no flash.

Yes, G, in principle you're right. I agree with you on the use of front-flash.
But if you use remote flash from an angle, everything looks much better. So that is really an option, and TelexStar's shot shows that those pics can look really nice!

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Well your pictures do look very good

And sometimes you have to make do as best you can. Well done.