I agree with you, Pieter. Despite my earlier advice to Jasmine about flashes, when I got back into photography several years ago, after my hiatus, I didn't use a flash for about 2 years. Not out of choice, just because I didn't have one. It did force me to learn to use available light quite a bit more, and I think that wasn't a bad thing.
I have a flash now, and don't use it all that much. Mostly parties (at night, inside dark halls) and family snaps. I would like to learn to use the flash better, which is why I'm in the process of arranging the purchase of a ttl flash so I can exploit my LX a bit better.
That's not to say that Jasmine shouldn't obtain a flash; if she chooses to obtain one (let's face it, there ~are~ situations that it's necessary or useful) there's a really cheap Vivitar that most stores sell on eBay for like $20 or something. Not too powerful, no tilt or zoom or anything, none-the-less it would make some indoor night shots more available to her.
But, your advice is good - learn to use light around you first, then learn to use the flash judiciously.
cheers, frank
"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
From: Pieter Nagel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
You already received a lot of good advice.
I would only add that you hold back on buying a flash-thingy until you've got a good grip on taking photographs using only the light that you have available in the scenery.
I have an ulterior motive, of course: once you understand natural light, I hope that you would also respect and appreciate it more, making you less likely to want to go and fry the Holy Baloney out of it with a Big Honking Raygun.
As you can see, I don't much like the indiscriminate use of flash.
Flash is a tool, mostly used as a weapon that makes one look more flashy and professional, and to scare your subjects into blinded submission and approriate awe of one's photographic talents.
Some people also use flash as a means of carrying a kind of virtual bubble of boring, head-on, miner's headlamp frontal white lighting around with them, so as to make all there photographs appear to be taken in the same surroundings.
And a smaller minority use flash, intelligently and judiciously, as a way to subtly enhance the light or make a photograph possible in a situation where they otherwise would not have been able to take one.
But that intelligence and judicion builds on experience of just what possibilities the light that is there offers them, so start there.
-- ,_ /_) /| / / i e t e r / |/ a g e l
_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca
