Ever wondered exactly when and why you might want to use a dedicated flash unit (such as a speedlight) in photography?

In this blog post, I’m going to break down the 3 most common ways that natural light photographers will supplement existing light with an on camera flash unit!

Broadly speaking, there are two times when using flash can be uber useful:

When the ambient light levels are too low, and you wish there was more light to the scene
When the light on your subject is uneven, and you want to “balance” the light for a more even exposure

Now, that doesn’t mean that every time the light is low you want to use flash, or every time the light is uneven you want to balance it up.

Often we WANT low light to get a certain ambience to a scene, and many times we strive FOR uneven light, so really, the when and why comes down to what the existing light you have is like, and how that matches up to the image you have in your head 😀

Here’s 3 times using a speedlight makes sense for me:

1) Adding Light To Dark Scenes

This is without doubt, the #1 way for me to use an on-camera flash unit - adding some much needed light to dark scenes.

An example might be photographing in a restaurant at night, indoors, where you can’t control or add extra light, or you’re just trying to capture your kids on Christmas morning, and you want to keep the ambience of a room lit by just the Christmas tree and a lamp.

In both cases, the light may look pretty, but in order to get the correct exposure, you'll need to max out your ISO, and risk a lot of noise and grain in your image.

This is a situation where a speedlight on your camera is worth its weight in gold!

By adding flash to supplement the available light, you can add extra light into the scene, which will in turn allow you to use a lower ISO number, resulting in less noise 🥳

2) On a Sunny Day

Sometimes there is TOO much light, and we're going to end up with a blown out background if we backlight our subject.

There are times when that's totally fine, and other times, we might actually want to see the sky behind our subject too!

This is when you can use your speedlight to "balance" the exposures, leading to a beautifully exposed subject AND background!

I’m a lazy photographer, and more often than not will work with the light I have so I definitely don’t do this too often but it’s nice to have the ability to do it nestled in your back pocket should the need arise.

3) To Fill In Shadows

There are times when using natural light that the shadows are too deep for the look we want (again, to be clear, shadows are NOT bad - we want shadows as they add depth and dimension, but sometimes you just don’t want so much!)

This is when you can use flash as a fill light, where you use it to subtly lift the shadows on your subject.