Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Contrast Setting and Fill-in-Flash in Digital Camera
Contrast
When you shoot in a cloudy day, or slightly before dawn, at dawn, slightly after dawn or an hour before sunset the light is soft and warm in color and you get excellent results in green mode itself. Here, default normal setting itself controls contrast automatically.
But, in conditions of extremely bright sunlight, the digital images show a very high contrast. Image editing software can correct this to some extent. Total correction is nearly impossible and texture and details are generally lost. The contrast level adjustment control helps in such cases. By slightly lowering the setting, very bright highlights and dark shadow areas can be minimized. Images can then be further edited in the relevant software.
On just a bright sunny day, changing position will help to overcome undesired contrast. If images of people are to be captured, they can be moved to a shady area and fill-in flash can be used to light up their faces to remove shadows and add sparkle to their eyes.
Fill-In Flash
This function, as its name suggests, serves to fill in light where it is deficient, though it may be called by different names by different camera manufacturers.
If the subject is backlit, the bright background will misguide the camera and the faces of the subjects will become dark. Fill-In flash will remedy such situations. Even when the background is not backlit, if shadows are cast over the subject, you should resort to fill-in flash.
The fill-in flash function ensures that a regulated and reduced amount of light is added to the normal outdoor light, to fill up light over shadows and reduce contrast. It enables image capture to be metered and exposed in a diligent manner.
Fill-In flash has to be selected to be ‘on’ or ‘off’ in menu list.
