How do I reduce flash brightness on my Canon EOS 300D SLR camera?
Question by Daisy Summerfield: How do I reduce flash brightness on my Canon EOS 300D SLR camera?
I recently bought a second hand Canon EOS 300D SLR camera, but I’m having a bit of trouble with the flash. It is extremely bright, and nearly all my photos with flash come out white. I am hoping there is a setting to change this, and that its not faulty. Please help!:L
Best answer:
Answer by Jim A
Did you get an owner’s manual with the camera? If not you can go to the Canon USA site and download a pdf version free.
It has to do with flash compensation, you can either brighten or soften the flash. But, that’s really not the answer.
The best thing you can do is back up from your subject. If you stand 3 feet away you’ll be over exposed. Best to be from 7 to 10 feet away for best exposure.
Here’s another little trick I use all the time. I set my manual settings at 1/200 (probably your camera’s flash sync speed) and f/5.6. Unless I’m doing manual settings shooting work I leave my manual settings there. When I need flash I simply roll to manual and pop the flash. The exposure is generally correct at 8 feet or so from my subject. The shutter speed is fast enough to avoid blur from camera movement and f/5.6 is just about right for exposure.
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3 Comments
Jim offered some decent advice.
There are a couple of other things you can also do. The first (and cheapest) would be to get a flash diffuser for your camera like http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/522116-REG/Gary_Fong_PUF_RETAIL.html#features .
The best thing would be to get a hotshoe flash with E-TTL. That way, the camera can adjust the amount of light the flash disperses and you can change the angle of the flash head.
Old school & cheap ways : tissue paper, wax paper, cut a piece to fit from a milk carton.
Actually Jim’s advice is pretty crap.
Picking some settings and saying that they’ll do for most things is a nonsense. The max sync speed for flash he suggested takes no account of whether you want to blend in any ambient at all (a shutter speed of 1/200 will most likely kill the ambient, especially indoors). The aperture is what controls the flash exposure – f5.6 might be ok for some images, but it depends on the flash power.
His suggestion to back away from the subject will also be completely wrong if the flash is in TTL mode, matrix metering, because the camera will meter a large area of darkness and turn the flash power up to max (which is probably what’s happening in your case). To get TTL on camera flash to work properly, you either need to have your subject occupying a large portion of the frame (if on matrix metering) or spot meter on the subject to get their exposure right.
You should be able to select the flash to be TTL or manual – try it in manual & dial the power right down if you can & test it. If you use TTL flash, bear in mind what I said about metering/subject position.
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