Stock Flash

[Steele Productions]

I have an A100, I am mostly happy with it. When taking pictures inside using the stock flash I am dissapointed with the flash quality, if I can manage to avoid my lens casting a huge shadow, the light is either too harsh or doesn't spread enough to light everything in the picture. I am sure I am doing something wrong, what can I do to get nice interior photos with the flash, sometimes I think I would be better off using a decent point and shoot camera, but I love my lense options with my DSLR.

[Anbesol]

open up the f-stop as much as possible (the lower the better, much wider light spread), use a higher ISO (200-400). Also, try shooting for a faster shutter speed, but 1/60th and faster will be fine. This would help if you had a lens with a faster aperture range (1.4-4)

The stock flash is disappointing though. I agree, its the same with any stock flash. Another thing you can do is get a soft light diffuser to place around the flash to help diffuse and dissipate the light. But, you'll still not get them exactly like you want. Honestly, the only flash I personally ever find worth using is the accessory bounce flashes.

Another thing worth doing is depending more on the continuous light, you can take advantage of this by opening your f-stop and increasing your ISO, you can also reduce the flash compensation, this will give you less flash but consequentially also less shadow. Flashes can be unpredictable and automation rarely if ever works well with exposures that use a stock flash.

Here is an example of the flash I use - ebay item, its actually the lower end model, but you'd be surprised what you can do with it. Works wonderfully for faster f-stops, and can even work for some pretty slow f-stops too. Heres an example of what I did with it, on 50mm f1.7 and f2.2..

Also - really flash works much better on Manual mode, the worst thing I think you can do with a flash is use an entirely automatic mode.