Comparison - with and without flash

This is now an archive web site.
Some is still relevant as at July 2026 but some is purely of historic interest.

Lisa and I (Graham) are now fully retired from IT training.We have made many friends over 30 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Apache, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are out of date, but with upward compatability some examples remain operational and relevant. You are welcome to make use of them "as seen", at your own risk. We now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We remain active, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to do things!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))

Comparison - with and without flash (written 2008-11-20)

Do you Use flash to make a bright scene darker? Not necessarily!

Here's a picture of Melksham Station taken last Sunday night with the available light:

And here's a picture taken a few seconds later, taken with flash:

Flash gives extra fill-in light in the foreground, and with camera adjustment it can actually cause the background to go much darker - quite the opposite of what many new photographers expect. You'll note that the only thing that's at all close to my camera in the these two shots - the blue box to the bottom right of the picture - is lighter in the flashed scene, but darker in the natural light scene. And that's reversed for the rest of the scene.

Flash is ideal for taking pictures of people / filling in close by scenes as it emphasises the close and darkens the background - sometimes to the extent that it makes a photograph that would have been impossible into one that's possible. For the scene above, though, it's counter-productive.

Footnote - there were no trains around at the time I took these pictures; the railway's guidelines for photographers state that you should not use flash to photograph moving trains and - as you can see from the pictures - it would be pretty pointless to do so anyway!
(written 2008-11-20, updated 2008-11-24)

Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles

G912 - Well House Consultants - Photography for the Web
  [97] What makes a professional photographer? - (2004-10-23)
  [194] Published Photographer - (2005-01-30)
  [546] The relevance of the hairy woodpecker - (2005-12-28)
  [553] Keep that image small - (2006-01-03)
  [563] Merging pictures using PHP and GD - (2006-01-13)
  [665] PHP Image viewing application - (2006-04-01)
  [819] My projector has a photo-id - (2006-07-31)
  [937] Display an image from a MySQL database in a web page via PHP - (2006-11-22)
  [1087] Telling a story in different ways - (2007-02-20)
  [1114] PHP Image upload script - (2007-03-21)
  [1185] Themes for the web site - (2007-05-13)
  [1188] What shape is your shake? - (2007-05-15)
  [1194] Drawing hands on a clock face - PHP - (2007-05-19)
  [1396] Using PHP to upload images / Store on MySQL database - security questions - (2007-10-19)
  [1506] Ongoing Image Copyright Issues, PHP and MySQL solutions - (2008-01-14)
  [1568] What colour is the season? - (2008-03-08)
  [1732] Old pictures and comparisons - (2008-08-01)
  [2224] Trowbridge - a missed opportunity? Melksham - into the breach? - (2009-06-08)
  [2252] Leaping dog, Leaping horse, copyright of old masters - (2009-06-20)
  [2592] Re-using our pictures - (2010-01-21)
  [2884] Hotlinked images onto adult material sites - (2010-07-23)
  [3104] Catering in Syracuse, the Saigon Cafe, stolen images and Christmas - (2010-12-25)
  [3170] How far is something pictured from the camera? - (2011-02-15)
  [3402] That spec is a kingfisher ... - (2011-08-21)

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Some other Articles

Virtual Hosting under Tomcat - an example
Every cloud has a silver lining
Keeping on an even keel
Virtual Hosts and Virtual Servers
Comparison - with and without flash
Shopping in Melksham
Some Linux and Unix tips
Melksham Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Ruby to access web services
MySQL database from Ruby - an example

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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. So much so, and it's so long ago that we are retired

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