John Borwick's blog

For Christmas I received a Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash.  We anticipate taking lots of indoors pictures this year, since we’re expecting in May.  I haven’t learned much yet about the flash, but even in full auto mode the flash looks really good–much better than the built-in flash.

The flash attaches to the flash mount on top of my Canon XSi.  It takes four AA batteries–I’m not sure how many flashes you get out of one set of batteries.  The flash is divided into two parts–the bottom part has the controls, and stays stationary.  The top part rotates 360 degrees and can be positioned straight up, straight out, or at several angles in between.

When you turn it on, and it auto-magically communicates with the camera body.  If the flash is pointed straight forward it tries to figure out the length of the lens to understand how powerful the flash should be.  My understanding is that the flash figures out how much light would be required to bring the camera up to the “proper” exposure, so you can shoot ISO 100 + f/11 at night and see something.

The tricks I have learned so far are

• Use either the flash control, or the camera body control, to adjust the flash exposure–rather than bringing you up to “+0″ exposure you can have the flash bring you up to “-1″ or “-2/3″.  This works better when there is a second light source and you can capture a little of that other light source’s light at your ISO/f-stop/shutter speed combination.
• Point the flash straight up to bounce light off the ceiling, which looks more “natural”
• Point the flash at an angle forward or at an angle so you get bounce from a wall.
• Put your hand behind the flash so that some of the light bounces off your hand and gives you a more flesh-colored light.
• Put a piece of paper behind the flash so that light bounces off the paper (similar idea to using your hand)