Photo Quickies

PhotoQuickie came across research being done at Microsoft to fix photos taken with a flash. Personally, PhotoQuickie does not think highly of flash photography as the results usually can be easily identified as having been done with a flash. The objects are washed out, and certain angles reflect white splotches.

Microsoft’s approach is to take the same scene twice, once without the flash and once with. Then, the combination of the two photos will hopefully produce a better one.

PhotoQuickie has some reservations about this process. First, it is difficult to get two shots from an identical position with our shakey hands unless we use a tripod. And if we’ve remembered to bring a tripod, then we figure that we might as well adjust the exposure to compensate for the low light level.

Although, PhotoQuickie still likes this idea, and hopes that we see it soon in pocket-sized cameras. [via Digg]

PhotoQuickie has had mixed results using our flash indoors; either everything is washed out in bright, harsh light or our photo clearly shows the 5 meters of nothingness in front of the camera and darkness elsewhere.

Here’s a trick PhotoQuickie uses to get around the problem when taking still photos. We take a test picture with the flash off to get our camera to pick a suitable shutter speed. Then we flip over to shutter priority mode and set the shutter speed to that speed (or a little slower). Finally, we put our camera on a flat surface and use that as a tripod to take our picture without the flash.

That usually gives us the image similar to what we see with our own eyes. On the occasion that our photos still come out blurry (thanks no doubt to PhotoQuickie’s lack of surgeon hands), here’s a meta-trick.

We use our camera’s two second self-timer when taking these shots so the vibrartions of our fingers don’t shake the camera when the shutter is open. The normal ten second self-timer would definitely also work, though we think that standing there and watching our camera for ten seconds would get us some interesting stares.