How to take better portraits using your Sony Alpha & an accessory Flash...

[snowfallkell]

or anything in low light. I cannot raise the ISO any higher than 400 as it produces horrible coloured grain that makes the photos unusable. I regret buying the 50mm lens for low light as it doesn't produce good pictures without putting it through photoshop to enhance it & sharpen to get it anywhere near usable. I also don't think it makes a very good portrait lens because of its lack of sharpness!

[snowfallkell]

I just want to say I have got the Sony 50mm lens & is very disappointed with the lack of sharpness it has & have compared to my sigma 70-300 4-5.6 lens which gives me a faster shutter speed than than the 50mm lens at its wide open f stop. I brought the 50mm lens hoping it would give me faster shutter speeds in low light but it fails. I am hoping to get rid of my Sony A390 as it doesn't handle low light photography at all which is useless if you are doing band photography

[chufoc02]

how do i control the sync speed of a sony a 580? when i put the flash on the camera the speed is set to 1/160 and i can go lower but no faster .... and i i want to make de back ground look black and the person lighted by the flash !! but with this one i can not do it. help !!!

[raw9133]

@chufoc02 i think its because 1/160 is the maximum speed of ur camera's pop-up flash...and the only solution is get a decent flash...

[Lofote]

@raw9133 WRONG! The 1/160 is the x-sync speed of the CAMERA, it has NOTHinG to do with the flash. Read about X-sync speed anywhere on the net.

[Lofote]

@raw9133 You can't change the sync speed of a camera If you can't change the location (e.g. have an actual black background), you can only use a HSS capable flash. HSS means, that the flash doesn't fire only once, but multiple times, so that you can use e.g. 1/500 and still have a properly flashed picture (if you don't use HSS and set it to 1/500, which is possible with a "dumb" flash, you would only have ~1/2 of the picture flashed).

[dnkythemnky]

You helped me make my mind up on buying that flash. And I'm going to keep an eye out for a DT50mm lens too.

Thank you so much! :)

[miguelgaio]

That flash made me laugh a bit.

[arrow1archer]

oh sony you used a mac to edit this i can tell by the effects used what about sony vaios this channel is a disgrace

[srzy]

@arrow1archer lol you're an idiot. you can't compare sony vaios and using a mac program. if you want some compare mac then compare it to windows.

[arrow1archer]

@srzy im not comparing it im saying why dient they use vaios

[MrGirbes]

hi,

Sony has this nice feature on its camera's it is called Wireless mode which allows you to use flash - off camera. which for portreture gives more flathering light. It uses the onboard flash to trigger an external flash.This is a feature not mentioned much by sony, but I have been working with it for a while and it works very nicely. however you need a flash which is compatible with this system, to work as a slave flash. So I like your story but to my opinion it is not complete.