Turning The Flash Off In Auto Mode
A couple of weeks ago I was shooting a sunset over the Athabasca River in Jasper National Park. Another photographer came over to see what I was shooting and promptly starting taking pictures as well. From what I could see he had a good eye and a nice entry level digital SLR camera. Every time he took a photo, his on camera flash would pop up and fire.
I am a firm believer in people using the flash on their cameras for portraits and subjects that are close up. But they are not very strong and only work well if your subject is less than about twenty feet from the camera. Obviously this is not the case for a sunset photo.
I talked with the guy and he said that he could not turn the flash off. He was shooting in full automatic mode, or on his Canon, the green square mode. In this mode almost all of the camera functions are automated and you can not override them. This mode is made for quick easy shooting, kinda like a ‘grab and go’ mode. Fine for taking photos if you are not wanting to think about any camera settings. So as he was taking pictures, he would try to push the flash down before each shot, but it would just pop up again.
Here is the way around it. Put the camera in ‘P’ or program mode. This mode is very simislar to Full Auto mode, except it will allow you to change or override the camera settings. So in this case, pushing the flash down lets the camera know you do not want to use the flash and so it will now set itself to use the available light. You will find that you can change most of the camera settings in ‘P’ mode, allowing you the ease of auto, with some personalization and control of how you take the photo.
What I have described above is for Canon cameras, but most consumer digital cameras will have some way of overriding the automatic while still letting the camera do most of the thinking.
Happy Shooting
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