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Photo tips
SHOOTING INDOORS
When you have a roof over your head and a camera in your hand, it's important to exercise some creative control over how much light actually enters the camera.
Luckily, we've taken the guesswork out of indoor photography, and we're ready to share a few invaluable tips that will shed some light on your subjects.
1. Light matters
Without good lighting, you'll be totally in the dark -- a fact that's true for both digital and traditional photography. If your lighting doesn't measure up, your photos will be but dim memories of what they
could have been. In most cases, low light can easily be remedied with the use of a flash.
2. Flashy pictures aren't very flashy
Most digital cameras offer built-in flashes, but generally these light sources aren't very good. When shooting in a dimly lit room or at night, subjects that are only a meter away tend to appear as luminous
ghouls against a pitchblack background; you'd be much better off snapping photos outside or in a naturally lit room during the day.
Counterintuitive as it may sound, low contrast is better than high contrast; the low contrast you'll get by not using a flash is preferable to the jarring white light and high contrast that you would get from
using a bright flash on your subjects. There's nothing worse than a large area of black or white (called a hot spot) in a photo.
3. Get the red out
If you've ever shot a picture with a flash, you've no doubt encountered the dreaded red eye, when pupils appear a demonical bright red. No need to call the exorcist, though; the culprit is none other than the
subject's own dilated pupils. In dim light, pupils enlarge to let in more of the available light, which permits the flash to bounce off the inside of the retina and reflect back into the camera lens.
One solution is to turn on your camera's red-eye reduction flash. This provides a preflash, which reduces pupil size so that the second flash is reflected harmlessly off the iris. The problem with a preflash
is that it causes people to blink, and most of us prefer our subjects with red eyes rather than closed eyes.
A better solution is to turn on a few lights or simply to redirect some of the lighting when shooting indoors. By shining some light on a situation, you reduce pupil size naturally and cut your risk of red-eye
photos. Another option is to tape a small piece of translucent tracing paper over the flash to diffuse the light. This softens the sharp point source of the flash and also cuts down on harsh shadows and the
possibility of red eye.