Digital Photography

Want to shoot better holiday pics of your family this year? Well, when you shoot with flash, one easy way to get better results is to add a flash diffuser. 

Normally, the light from a built-in flash is narrowly focused and very harsh, leading to strong shadows, uneven lighting, and, often, glare spots on the skin and that old devil, red eye. A diffuser, which is a thin piece of transluscent plastic or material that fits over the flash unit, spreads and softens the light for more flattering results (although red eye may not be totally eliminated). The picture here shows the LumiQuest Soft Screen (www.lumiquest.com), which is made for the pop-up flash units found on some SLR cameras, but you can buy them for point-and-shoot models as well. You don’t have to spend much to gain the benefit of a diffuser, either — this one, for example, retails for about $14. And because it folds flat for storage, it’s easy to tuck into your camera bag.

Keep in mind that the camera doesn’t have any way to know that you’ve added a diffuser, though, so the softening of the flash light may cause your pictures to be just slightly underexposed at the normal settings. If your camera offers flash-power adjustment, just kick up the flash strength a notch to compensate for the diffuser. Otherwise, look for your camera’s Exposure Value (EV) adjustment control (it’s usually labeled with a little plus/minus sign) and raise the value slightly to get a brighter picture.