Day 4: Bouncing the flash, exposure experiment.
Day 4: Bouncing the flash, exposure experiment.
Day 3 was a picture of James with the flash and with the bounced flash. This time, I played without the flash (as I usually shoot my kids) and with the bounced flash to see how the exposure times would change. I picked one of our new Care Bears because 1) it sits still as long as there isn’t another Care Bear around (unlike my children who never, ever sit still) and 2) I had another playing with my camera experiment that I wanted to use with these bears, so I wanted a comparison photo.
On left, no flash: f/2.8, ISO800–the camera set the exposure at 1/10s.
On right, business card flash: f/2.8, ISO800–the camera set the exposure at 1/20s.
When I look at the two pictures, the bounced flash ones are sharper. That was the case with all the shots I took. The only light that was on was my kitchen light. The two lamps in the living room were off.
My next step will be trying to build a contraption to put over my subject off which to bounce the light. The business card trick only directs the light upwards, and while I have white ceilings they are very high white ceilings. And you can see the flash behind the bear on the wall, but this was just me doing an experiment to see how much faster the exposure is using this built-in flash trick.
Tonight though, I’m going to play with my focus. I will swear to you on my children that where I have the focal point on the subject is not where it ends up being focused once I look at the picture on my computer. Swear! I need to play with my camera until I can figure out why this keeps happening to me. For example, I was focusing on the nearest eye on the bear, and in a lot of cases, the nose ended up being what is in focus. This happened even when I stopped down. This happens a lot when I take pictures of the kiddos. That means I should have a picture for tomorrow.
Also, I wish there was a Project 366 for exercising because I really need to get back into regular exercising which will take away from regular photographing. I’ll have to cheat and take enough to post for a few days at a time.
