Ive recently got a FZ20 camera and a flash from my old vivtar works on it. I was wondering how to make it a less brighter flash. Masking tape over the flashlens perhaps?
Dont want a brilliant white flash in everyones eyes on the foto. Nice glow to light things up a bit at te reception.

Ive recently got a FZ20 camera and a flash from my old vivtar works on it. I was wondering how to make it a less brighter flash. Masking tape over the flashlens perhaps?
Dont want a brilliant white flash in everyones eyes on the foto. Nice glow to light things up a bit at te reception.

Try a bit of tracing paper or - better still - try to 'bounce' the flash off something by tilting the flash head (if it tilts) upwards and sticking a business card to the top of it so that the flash fires upwards and the business card deflects some of the light forwards onto the subject.

Shame there isn't a photography forum :rolleyes:

Lol :D

mad_dr is right, you really want to bounce it off the ceiling to make the light more natural - we're used to seeing objects illuminated by diffuse light from above.

Covering the flash head may work to reduce the amount of light, but that won't affect its quality. Depending on how you camera and flash interact to set exposure, you might just get the same deer-in-headlights look but underexposed, or the flash may simply become brighter to compensate.

Bouncing is OK but if you have high ceilings or any other colour than white then your stuffed. Best idea is to get one of those collapsable reflectors and have someone hold this above the camera and then bounce off this. (Works for outdoors too)

Here's another possibility (or two):

Flash most likely has a manual mode where it won't try to do any clever metering things, and so not stuff up your attempts to attenuate it with tissue / tracing paper etc.

If you're lucky you might find you can set the power. For daylight fill in set it low then take a few test shots to work out how much you need to compensate the exposure with the camera - either by using a slightly smaller appature than recommended for the flash prog, or by using the exposure compensation. (I'm not familiar with your camera to be more specific, sorry!)

Alternatively, if you're using a reflector, you may be able to ditch the flash altogether and bounce light in using that.

Lastly (but not least), take a look at the competition thread for DIY flash diffuser advice!

I don't know what an fz20 is but if you can use manual settings on the flash and camera you want to set for two stops down from the ambient exposure outside. eg if you are shooting at 250th of a sec at f11 set the flash at f5.6, if you are at f8 set the flashat f4. In very bright sunlight stop down just one.

Bouncing indoors I would go a stop or two over eg camera set at f5.6 flash on f8 or even f11 won't hurt. You can always look at my website for inspirational wedding shots http://www.mauricephotos.co.uk/ :norty: