I love my little digital camera (a two year old Casio Exilim) - it's tiny, yet with enough exploring of the menus it can be set to behave just how I like... Except in one regard: The flash. It's not adjustable and always seems to be too bright when used indoors, so here's some hacks I've adopted to get round this.

1. I keep half a train ticket in my wallet to put over the flash for close ups, it lets just enough light through. And of course if you need it, using thinner paper means more light.
2. I've bought a really cool, very cheap, bendy pocket tripod (search ebay for bendy tripod to see what I mean) to use (without the flash, and with a 2 second delay) on static subjects.
3. Zooming in and standing further away is an old favourite of course, but is still usually a bit stark for my tastes.
4. If it's a party you can get quite a good effect by putting on the flash alongside the "fair weather" setting (indicated with a sun icon). That means the flash goes, capturing the subject where you want, but the shutter stays open for a bit, making light sources brighten and generally fuzzing the edges and dropping the brightly exposed initial shot back into the mix. That's not the best explaination, so here's an example of the fair weather mode in action. You can also have some fun moving the camera around a bit too. :-)
5. Finally, I could always buy another camera: Anti-shake mode, low-light mode and adjustable flash power are all common options nowadays. Something to consider when debating the next purchase anyway...

As an aside: In theory pushing the ISO up and suppressing the flash might buy you some leeway, but my Exilim only goes to 400 & I've never managed to get a noticable improvement in the results, but it may work for you...

Labels: digital camera, flash