DSC-S85 Indoor shots

I have been taking many indoor pics of the new baby. Some are not coming out to good. Some of the pictures the background is either red or so dark you cant see anything exept what the flash picked up. What i dont understand is why wont the pictures come out atleast as bright as the room is? Is there any recommended settings for indoor shots that may help my percent of good pics. thanks for any info. forgive me i am learning.

thanks

There's no reason to expect the background to be bright, so this isn't a malfunction.

The red cast is due to a number strange decisions that Sony made with flash white balance and shutter speed in auto mode. If you use shutter priority with 1/60 or 1/100 shutter speed with flash, you'll reduce the red effect.

Ron Parr

brettv said:

I have been taking many indoor pics of the new baby. Some are not
coming out to good. Some of the pictures the background is either
red or so dark you cant see anything exept what the flash picked
up. What i dont understand is why wont the pictures come out
atleast as bright as the room is? Is there any recommended
settings for indoor shots that may help my percent of good pics.
thanks for any info. forgive me i am learning.

thanks

Click to expand...

Hi Ron,

Thanks for your advice on indoor flash pictures. I understand the part about 1/60 or 1/100 in shutter priority. When you say flash do you mean to use the force flash?

HarveyF

Ron Parr said:

The red cast is due to a number strange decisions that Sony made
with flash white balance and shutter speed in auto mode. If you
use shutter priority with 1/60 or 1/100 shutter speed with flash,
you'll reduce the red effect.

Ron Parr

brettv said:

I have been taking many indoor pics of the new baby. Some are not
coming out to good. Some of the pictures the background is either
red or so dark you cant see anything exept what the flash picked
up. What i dont understand is why wont the pictures come out
atleast as bright as the room is? Is there any recommended
settings for indoor shots that may help my percent of good pics.
thanks for any info. forgive me i am learning.

thanks

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--HarveyF

He probably means to force the camera to flash and not let it decide automatically. Press the flash button until you get the lightning bolt to show up on your LCD. (That's how it works with my S70 anyway.)

HarveyF said:

Hi Ron,

Thanks for your advice on indoor flash pictures. I understand the
part about 1/60 or 1/100 in shutter priority. When you say flash do
you mean to use the force flash?

Click to expand...

After many, many pics with the external flash HVL-1000 and my S85, these are my thoughts:

Decide if you like the flash to be lit or not. Set the camera for it.

If you have chosen forced flash, shoot in shutter speed mode (S) and go up the speed until a very dim image is shown on your LCD screen. More about it later. The camera will set the aperture to the lower F-stop available, so you'll get a shallow depth of field; choose carefully where to focus.

Why I do this? Because when the S85 decides to fire the flash (or is forced by you to do so), will set the white balance to the flash light colour temperature. If enough ambient light comes into the lens, a red cast would be noticeable in the pic (ambient indoors light usually has lower colour temperatoure than flash's).

If you shoot indoors pics in automatic, chances are that you get a combination of aperture and shutter speed that allows enough ambient light to show in the pic.

If you like to get bright backgrounds, rely on an external flash and bounce it to the ceiling or to a wall. Although the easy choice is the Sony's HVL-F1000, some are using slave flash units, but this is something I have not experienced.

Hope this helps.

brettv said:

I have been taking many indoor pics of the new baby. Some are not
coming out to good. Some of the pictures the background is either
red or so dark you cant see anything exept what the flash picked
up. What i dont understand is why wont the pictures come out
atleast as bright as the room is? Is there any recommended
settings for indoor shots that may help my percent of good pics.
thanks for any info. forgive me i am learning.

thanks

Click to expand...

thanks everyone for the information. I dont understand what aperature does? what is the difference between 1/60 and 1/100
thanks for the knowledge

PoorBoyMatt said:

HarveyF said:

Hi Ron,

Thanks for your advice on indoor flash pictures. I understand the
part about 1/60 or 1/100 in shutter priority. When you say flash do
you mean to use the force flash?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Ron Parr said:

There's no reason to expect the background to be bright, so this
isn't a malfunction.

The red cast is due to a number strange decisions that Sony made
with flash white balance and shutter speed in auto mode. If you
use shutter priority with 1/60 or 1/100 shutter speed with flash,
you'll reduce the red effect.

Click to expand...

Sorry about the confusion. I assumed that he was using flash. In shutter priority mode, the flash will come on automatically if needed in shutter priority mode.

If no flash is desired, then it's best to use aperture priority with the widest aperture and turn the flash off. Of course, this could give you very long shutter speeds.

Ron

Two parameters control the amount of light (exposure value) that comes into the lens: aperture and shutter speed. Aperture means how much the lens' diaphragm will be opened, and is usually measured in F-stops (the lower the number, the more light goes thru the lens, awkward but it is as it is). Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second (so 1/60 is a sixtieth of a second) but more than one second is possible for longer exposures. To add more confusion, because the sub-second exposures are commoner, only 60 would be shown in the camera, meaning 1/60, 100 means 1/100, adn so on). This is called shutter speed, and the higher the number, the less light would be allowed for the pic.

When you set your S85 in S mode, shutter speed is fixed by the user, and the camera calculates the correct aperture according to the reading of its internal light meter so the exposure produces a well lit pic. When the A mode is chosen, the user fixes the aperture and the camera calculates the shutter speed. In M (manual) mode the user sets both parameters and the S85 will show the deviation from a well lit pic in thirds of EV (Exposure Value).

Hope this helps.

brettv said:

PoorBoyMatt said:

HarveyF said:

Hi Ron,

Thanks for your advice on indoor flash pictures. I understand the
part about 1/60 or 1/100 in shutter priority. When you say flash do
you mean to use the force flash?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...