Hey Everybody,
A quick letter to concert goers accross the world. As you will read I have been to a couple of concerts recently and I have noticed a disturbing trend in camera use ignorance. Now when one gets the urge to capture a moment in time a digital picture is usually the medium of choice due to the ease of the technology and the handy portability of the modern device. So let us say we are in a dark concert hall and this person gets the urge to capture the moment their rock heros are blasting eardrums and cleverly twisting the english language to music. Now I have noticed the intuition of this goer is to grab that digital camera and start flashing pictures left right up and down, which is not only blinding everyone with multiple red-eye reducing flashes, but also not capturing the moment to their dismay. School Time: a typical camera flash is meant to illuminate the photographed subject from between five and fifteen feet (various models will yeild varied results), but the point is that around fifteen feet or so is as far as that flash will be effective in brightening your image. Even if it does show up on the subject at various distances beyond that maximum mark. So as I watched many a young rocker shaking their head in distress and then quickly throwing their hand back in the air to try agian, and again, and yet again to capture rock hero swooning a hundred feet away. School Time part-2: A camera captures an image by allowing light in through the lense to expose a celluloid strip (film) or a processor that digitally captures the image in zeros and ones. The lense controls the amount of light let in by opening in diameter more or less, which is called aperture. The point for fan boy rock star is that if the camera is set on flash it's aperture is set lower because the image, if within the correct distance, should be quite illuminated. Sooo... if the subject of your photograph is beyond the capabilities of the flash your picture will actually be darker than if you would have left the flash off to begin with. Which when used properly would save my eyes, as a fellow concert goer, the bands who I am sure would appreciate a lack of popping bulbs, and your photos, which will be dark, will be brighter and better in no time flat.
Your Friend
Eric the concert goer Strahl