I always thought flash photos were fine until I ruined a food court shot

For years I'd walk into abandoned malls with my DSLR and blast everything with flash, thinking it was the only way to get clear detail in those dark spaces. Then I visited the old Franklin Park Mall outside Toledo last September and took a picture of the 1980s taco stand counter with all its tile work. When I got home and saw the harsh shadows had wiped out every bit of color and texture in the original Formica, I finally understood why everyone here talks about ambient light being better. Has anyone else had a similar moment where they realized their technique was actually making the photos worse?

4 comments

4 Comments

felixramirez1mo ago

Did you try recovering that tile texture in post-processing?

phoenix3311mo ago

Yeah because Photoshop can fix a flash that looked like a interrogation lamp.

sean_johnson1612d ago

The flash on my D750 actually melted part of a wedding cake once, so I feel your pain. Drop the exposure compensation by 1.3 stops and bounce the light off a white ceiling if you can, it softens things way more than you'd expect. Did you try converting the raw file to black and white to salvage any detail in those blown highlights?

oscarb7712d ago

Learned that lesson the hard way myself a few years back shooting an old diner in Akron. Got home and saw all the chrome trim and neon signs looked totally flat and washed out because the flash killed every shadow that gave the place character. Found that setting the camera on a mini tripod and using a 2 to 3 second shutter speed lets you pick up all that ambient light from the old signs and windows without blowing anything out. You can still use a little flash to fill in the darkest corners, just dial it way back to like -2 exposure compensation so it only adds a touch of light instead of taking over the whole scene. The raw file might have enough latitude to pull some of that tile texture back if you bring the highlights down and lift the shadows a bit in Lightroom.