Flash Blur

Potency

Completely new to photography. Just got a Canon 400d. Playing around with it and found that photos are almost always blurred without the flash on. Why is this? They are indoor shots and with the flash they are nice and sharp but too bright. The light is perfect without without flash.
Any advice?

murpho999

Could be a number of things, but most likely it's camera shake due to exposures being too long.

What mode are you shooting in?

Can you post a picture, with details, exposure time etc so we can see what the problem is?

City-Exile

We need to know what settings you've used.
If you right-click on the file, select Properties & click on the Details tab, you'll see the exif data. There you can see the information we need.

It sounds like you're shooting in one of the auto modes & the shutter is staying open too long. You might need to increase the ISO.

Ricky91t

When you switch the onboard flash on your camera has to compensate for the extra light it produces it does this by adjusting your shutter normally to around(1/60).Myabe taking this shot in the conditions with no flash you might only get 1/20 of less.Best thing to do is go to the "P" mode and adjust the ISO to maybe 400-800 this should mean you can get blur free shots without using the flash

unreggd

Honestly, if you're using an SLR you should only be usin Aperture / Shutter Priority, and Manual, and get used to using the cameras light meter

Automatic is for P&Ss only imo

But thats the reason for the blur. If the ISO is too low, and the aperture too small, the camera will have to compensate by making the shutter speed longer

Also, if you wanted to still use flash, you could use a diffuser and smaller Aperture


What were you takin a pic of?

5uspect

Are you using the Kit lens?

Ricky91t

unreggd wrote: »

Honestly, if you're using an SLR you should only be usin Aperture / Shutter Priority, and Manual, and get used to using the cameras light meter

Automatic is for P&Ss only imo

But thats the reason for the blur. If the ISO is too low, and the aperture too small, the camera will have to compensate by making the shutter speed longer

Also, if you wanted to still use flash, you could use a diffuser and smaller Aperture


What were you takin a pic of?

It sounds like hes only just got it so he best off getting used to the camera before hes starts messing with manual settings

Freddie59

Potency wrote: »

Completely new to photography. Just got a Canon 400d. Playing around with it and found that photos are almost always blurred without the flash on. Why is this? They are indoor shots and with the flash they are nice and sharp but too bright. The light is perfect without without flash.
Any advice?

I have a 450D. They're complete crap in auto, but in manual they're sweet! Get yourself this book
You'll never look back.:)

unreggd

ricky91t wrote: »

It sounds like hes only just got it so he best off getting used to the camera before hes starts messing with manual settings

It doesnt matter, its an SLR, the whole point is to use the manual/priority settings

Using Auto on an SLR is like buyin a PS3 to play PS2 games

5uspect

unreggd wrote: »

Using Auto on an SLR is like buyin a PS3 to play PS2 games

No its like buying a PC to play console games!

Calina

unreggd wrote: »

It doesnt matter, its an SLR, the whole point is to use the manual/priority settings

Using Auto on an SLR is like buyin a PS3 to play PS2 games

I think you are being slightly elitist and unfair here. The logical thing to do when you are learning to use a DSLR is see what the camera would recommend on automatic and then play around with them on a manual or semi-manual setting. if he is not having lessons, this is a fair way to start, particularly if you are not sure what each setting does.

Additionally, one of the key advantages of an SLR is to be able to change the lenses on it which gives a greater range of zoom or width which is not so possible with a lot of the compacts.

I am sure it is not intended, but you are coming across as quite condescending to the OP whose question suggests they are right at the beginning of this journey of exploration which you get with a camera of any description.

now, to more important matters:

OP: I assume you are using the no flash fully automatic setting.

This is the way things work; to light a scene properly, your camera needs to get a certain amount of light onto your sensor.

This is done by balancing the amount of time the shutter is open for with the width that it opens to (shutter speed versus aperture). You can increase the amount of light around if you use a flash.

Now, when you say that the lighting is okay without the flash, the truth is it is not. Your camera, which is on fully automatic, is calculating the amount of light needs for a correct exposure and it's coming up with a longish shutter speed. As we don't have the photograph to hand, my guess is it is coming up with a figure that is longer than 1/60th of a second. When your shutter is open that long, your photograph is more likely to suffer from handshake and blur. If you are particularly shaky, the figure could be 1/100. If you are indoor I'm guessing the camera is saying 1/20th.

I am guessing also that your grips with the flash being too bright is that it is reflecting too harshly off some element of the photograph - faces usually. This is probably because your camera is too near what you are trying to photograph.

I am supposing also that you have the basic kitlens which from what I remember is an 18-55mm midzoom with something like 4.0 aperture.

Aperture is the width to which your lens will open. It is counterintuitive in that the smaller the number, the wider it opens. There are a bundle of reasons for this which we will skip. The wider your lens opens, the faster a shutter speed you can have. 4.0 is not particularly wide, however, especially for indoor photographs. This is why shortly, someone is going to come along and tell you to get a 50mm 1.8 lens. I am not going to do this because I believe that you have a lot to learn about your camera and the lens you got with it is a good place to start. If you can step back a bit, you'll have some room to play with on overly bright flashes.

Enjoy the exploration with the camera and welcome to the forum.

unreggd

I meant using modes like Portrait and Full Auto will get you nowhere, because the camera does all the work.

Playing around with settings in Ap and Shut priority is good practice, cos you see instant changes, as opposed to takin auto pics, gettin them onto the pc, checkin exif, takin notes, etc etc

This will also get the OP used to changing settings faster, and using the cameras light meter

Calina wrote: »

one of the key advantages of an SLR is to be able to change the lenses on it which gives a greater range of zoom or width which is not so possible with a lot of the compacts

It actually is more mainstream in compacts now. The TZ3 is a few years old and has 10X optical [loads 4 a compact] and a widescreen lens

I am sure it is not intended, but you are coming across as quite condescending to the OP whose question suggests they are right at the beginning of this journey of exploration which you get with a camera of any description

No, never tried to be condescending. I just think when a person buys an SLR, they want to improve their photo taking, and should use the camera to its full potential

Calina

The exif is available in the camera just after you have taken the photograph. In fact, it's there before you take the photograph because it tells you what settings it is using. As a result, you can see, okay, the camera is doing f16 and a shutter speed of 1 second, I can't handhold that but I can go into ap control and make it do f4 instead and see if that will give me a faster shutter speed (clue, it will)

but if you have nowhere to start from, then it doesnt' matter whether you arei n manual Tv or Av. At least the camera gives you a clue under fully automatic.

unreggd

Calina wrote: »

The exif is available in the camera just after you have taken the photograph. In fact, it's there before you take the photograph because it tells you what settings it is using. As a result, you can see, okay, the camera is doing f16 and a shutter speed of 1 second, I can't handhold that but I can go into ap control and make it do f4 instead and see if that will give me a faster shutter speed (clue, it will)

but if you have nowhere to start from, then it doesnt' matter whether you arei n manual Tv or Av. At least the camera gives you a clue under fully automatic.

Yeah

But if ye use the light meter you'll know you have to adjust the Ap, Shutter and ISO for the right balance

instead of goin in and out of diff modes

it shouldnt matter a whole lot really, i just think yer better off jumpin into the deep end

Freddie59

unreggd wrote: »

i just think yer better off jumpin into the deep end

I have to agree. As someone who upgraded to a DSLR in April of this year I found that the auto performance (compared to the Fuji s5000 which I had) was atrocious.

It took a while to get used to the manual settings - but they open up a whole new world of quality to you. But I must reiterate that the Bryan Petersaon book (recommended to me here) is what really opened things up. It's a must-have for ANY beginner.

challengemaster

Agreed again - I've got a tendancy to jump into the deep end with things, so set my 400D to Manual as soon as it was out of the box

10 mins of messing with it and I pretty much knew what I was at, what certain things did.. quickstart manual helps too.