Have You Used Your Flash Light to Say "I am stupid and inconsiderate"?/你曾用閃光燈說"我是笨蛋加混蛋"嗎？

"I am stupid and inconsiderate." Have you been making this anouncement with the flash light of your camera?

Flash light is anonying. If you have been using it without discretion, chances are, you are anouncing you are a moron on top of being an asshole. In most ocassions, using night mode works much better than flash light, in addition to being considerate.

The physics of sight and photography is receiving the light bouncing off the object, or the light directly from the light source. When there is not sufficient lighting, a flash light acts as a light source, emits light, and have the light be bounced back from the object to the camera len. This means two things:

1. A flash light cannot brighten a light source: When using the flash light, the camera is ready to receive the darn strong light reflected back, hence less light is taken in. This means, flash light is usless if you try to take photographs of fireworks, stars, the effect of lighting from light sources other than your flash light, and/or any other kinds of light sources, unless your flash light is not working properly. For example, you cannot use flash light to photograph a picture shown on a movie screen, unless that screen is outside the range of your flash light. On this note, here comes the second point...
2. Flash light is useless if the object is out of the range of your flash light: Using a small digital camera flashing mountains afar away illustrates nothing but your IQ.

In most cases, flash light makes the photograph looks unatural. I recommend not setting the flash light on "auto",and use it mostly when you want to compensate the backlighting.

Please note that I am not a professional photographer. This is just my two cents as a geek who is nuts about physics.

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“我是個混蛋加笨蛋”你曾經用你照相機的閃光燈如此昭告天下嗎？

閃光燈很煩人。如果你在不該用的時候用，那你除了是個混蛋外，還很可能是個笨蛋。除了體貼他人外，通常使用夜拍模式的效果會好過打閃光。

從物理學上說，照相跟視覺的原理，都是接收物體反射來自光源的光。當光線不足時，閃光燈可以用來作為光源，將光打到物體上後，再反射回照相機鏡頭。這就是說：

1. 用閃光燈拍照，照不到其他光源：當使用閃光燈時，相機曝光時會自動調成接收閃光模式，因此更加拍不到原本就弱的光源。這就是說，用閃光燈拍不到煙火、星星、其他光源造成的效果。除非你的閃光燈失效，比方說距離太遠，否則也拍不到電影銀幕上的畫面。這就帶出了第二點...
2. 閃光燈的有效距離不是無限的：對著遠方群山閃光，只會讓你的IQ曝光。

通常用閃光燈拍出來的照片會不自然。個人建議不要把閃光燈設成自動，在逆光需要補光時才打閃光燈。

在下並非專業攝影家，只是個瘋物理的書呆子而已。