One of the tips I learnt early on in photography, is that using your cameras small flash often causes a really bad effect on your photos. This is due to the basic rules of light which state that a small far away light source creates a “harsh” light and a large, close light source creates a beautiful soft light. While it is not an absolute rule that you should never use your built in flash (or pop up flash), it won’t help you to create beautiful soft portrait light.
However, in this video you’ll see an incredibly simple way to improve your light from a popup flash with a very simple and cheap piece of equipment.
A balloon.
Have a look:
[Video via YouTube]
It works by turning the balloon into your light source. This is a larger light source than your flash and so gives off much softer light than using the flash as standard. This means you can get great exposure inside with little light, but not get that horrible harsh pop-up flash lighting, and it will work even with a cheap DSLR.
The Koldunov brother’s use a white balloon in the video which gives a more balanced light, but there’s no reason you couldn’t use a colored balloon to add some tones to your photos and get some more interesting results.
Give it a go and see what result you get!
[via PetaPixels]
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