Using Aluminum Foil for a better camera flash

Wednesday April 07, 2010

Estimated Reading Time: Less than one minutes

I was looking around on the Web the other day and saw a product for your SLR camera that bounces the light up so your in-door pictures look better. It was $34.99 which is way too expensive for a "reflective piece of material" especially when I have a whole roll of reflective material, aka aluminum foil, in our cabinet. I used this on my film camera which has a pop-up flash and I'm sure it would work with a digital one as well.

To start, here's what an in-door picture looks like without a flash:

Here's what the same picture looks like with the built-in flash :

Notice how Janey looks way washed out.

To fix this, I took a piece of aluminum foil (aluminium to our UK friends) and folded it in half. I curved it upwards like a scoop. Then I jammed the aluminum foil between the pop-up and the camera.

When I was done, I took the picture again:

Now the picture looks better lit and not washed out. I think it is much better and will keep using this for indoor flash pics.