Turn your camera upside down
Have you ever thought about why digital compacts with built-in flashes have such an obvious shadow on them? Well, obviously it’s because the camera is too damn small to get some distance between the lens and the flash. Quite apart from the problem with red eyes (which, luckily, is easy to avoid), it means that the shadow thrown on your subjects is annoying.
You can reduce the badness of built-in flashes in many ways: You can create a flash diffuser (another one), but these generally only work on off-camera flashguns, or larger built-in units. For compacts, you can try building an on-camera reflector, which helps lots.
If you have nothing at hand, though, you might just like this nutty idea: Turn your camera upside-down! I have no faith in the method whatsoever, but if nothing else, it will make people laugh, so this tip falls in the same category as the Pez-dispenser in your hotshoe or the umbrella-hat flash diffusor!
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Take a Canon EOS 450D. Attach a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Hit the streets of London. See what happens.
Insights, suggestions and comments
I frequently put my finger over half the flash on my camera and get much better results. I find that it’s just too bright and washes everything out. The only downside is that sometimes you get a red tint to the shot from the flash lighting up your finger .. but its only noticable on tight shots.
i have a tiny piece of coffee filter taped over my flash on my Olympus c-60. works great. :D
You can make flash reflectors out of one-gallon white plastic white milk cartons and velcro. I say one-gallon because they are big enough to provide a nice flat chunk of plastic to work with.
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