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Just because you’ve bought an expensive hot shoe flash ( Canon Speedlite 430EX‘s 580 EX’s, Sigma’s or Nikon SB-x00’s) doesn’t mean you’re going to now get the professional looking images you’re after. For the same reason it’s forbidden among pro’s to use that built-in DSLR on board flash, it can be just as poor to use that new hot shoe flash without attention to the direction of light.

The built-in on camera flash has two major flaws :

Flaw #1 – it’s a tiny, tiny light source. It’s going to be underpowered for your more difficult shooting situations, such as at your indoor event. You’ll also find that shooting a group of people with a wide-angle lens results in uneven light coverage across the group. Similarly, if you don’t have a “fast” wide aperture lens and find yourself having to photograph people with a slow telephoto lens ( f3.5 and smaller)  you won’t have enough light to properly expose subjects at a distance.

Flaw #2- it’s fixed in one position. Photos that look professional are seldom lit from a single light source emanating from the top of a camera. Such light bathes your subject in a flat and harsh (contrasty) light which often casts hard shadows on nearby walls.

These same flaws carry over to the expensive hotshoe flash as well, so it pays to understand how to utilize your flash , and understand lighting dynamics. When you mount your flash on your DSLR with your flash-head aimed directly at your subject, lets call this 12 o’clock position, you will experience the same light outlined in flaw #2 which is inherent in the built-in fixed flash. Just because your light source cost an additional $2-$400, your light isn’t going to be very different coming from this fixed location– just more powerful. When you must mount a flash on the camera, you must also learn how to TILT and SWIVEL the thing to maximize your lighting potential.

One of the fundamentals of art, painting, and photography, is easy for the layman to overlook. However, the trained artist recognizes the importance of the areas in shadow, as well as the areas in light. Light and shadow are the critical inseparable elements in any good 2-dimensional representation, as is the photograph. The light coming from the 12 o’clock position is so-called flat light because subjects appear relatively flat behind it.

By Swiveling your flash so that the light bounces off a nearby wall, effectively turning the wall into your light source, you’ll be giving your subject side light, which is directional, and more flattering because of the induction of shadows on your subject itself.

As a rule, the BIGGER the light source you can light a subject with, the more flattering the image will be.

Swivel that flash to 3 o’clock or 6 o’clock positions to find walls to bounce light onto your subject, rather than hitting them squarely with the flash head, which effectively is a much smaller light source than a wall. An alternative is to point the light straight up at a ceiling, which if low enough will be better than the 12 o’clock position, but is flawed for undesirable shadows that fall under the eyes.

Swiveling and tilting will get you started on your way to more professional looking images using your hot shoe flash, but there are some other options you might consider.

Remember that the bigger the light source, the more flattering it will be on your subject. One flash modifier that I often use to create a BIGGER light source when I don’t have nearby walls is the Gary Fong Lightsphere Universal System Cloud. It may look like a goofy gimmicky device, but it is worth its weight and then some in gold. It essentially rounds out your light source, enlarging it and thereby softening shadows on your subject. It is goofy to walk around with , and I always have one or two people asking me what it does, other than look like a chinese take out soup container. You can probably avoid the awkwardness of carrying this thing around by buying the Gary Fong GFLSC01 LightSphere Collapsible Diffuser.  It compresses down to a manageable size, and no doubt performs the same.

There are other Gary Fong devices for creating BIGGER softer light from your built-in flash, though I don’t have any experience with these. I trust the Gary Fong brand, so I recommend you try them out if you don’t yet own an off camera flash, but want to get better light from what you’ve got.

Check them out:

Gary Fong The Puffer Pop-up Flash Diffuser for Sony Digital SLR Cameras

Gary Fong Delta 3 Point & Shoot Flash Diffuser for Various Digital Point & Shoot Cameras

Related articles on the web

• The Gary Fong Lightsphere Collapsible (digital-photography-school.com)