Flash photography tip: Check your histogram regularly

Thursday 1 August 2024, 20:10 by Elja Trum | 2,271 views | 2 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

When you start working manually with your flash, you should always check that the light is set correctly. You can do this with a light meter, but personally I find that a bit cumbersome.

You can also achieve excellent results by turning on the histogram and the overexposure warning, the flashing white areas in the photo on your camera screen.

What you want to look out for is that there are no, or very few, flashing white areas visible, and that the histogram in your photo is filled from one end to the other. The shape of the histogram is not that important. What matters is that there is information in both the dark areas on the left and the light areas on the right.

Do not rely on your camera's screen. The brightness of the image on it depends heavily on the ambient light and the brightness setting of your camera screen.

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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2 comments

Hans van Vreeswijk wrote on Tuesday 6 August 2024 at 20:32 | reply
Does the book also explain how I can take flash photos directly (so not via the ceiling) without getting a very distracting shadow on the wall behind the person being photographed?
Translated from Dutch.

Elja Trum wrote on Tuesday 6 August 2024 at 21:48 | reply
Unless you have a lot of distance between your subject and the wall, that's simply not possible. That's why the book mainly focuses on how to take the flash off your camera.

Indirectly or with the help of light modifiers, such as an umbrella or softbox. One of the earlier tips in the book is actually about how you shouldn't use your camera's built-in flash.
Translated from Dutch.

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