How to make your flash look like natural light

Many beginners are wondering how to make your flash look like natural light? In fact, this trick works so well that if you do it right, you'll just have glorious-looking, soft, natural light whenever and wherever you want it. Your goal is to create light from your flash that matches, and blends in with, the current lighting in the scene, the ambient light and doesn't overpower it.

1. Do not change your f-stop or shutter speed. Instead, just lower the power output of the flash until it matches the available light. To do so, get the flash off the camera for directional light, and diffuse the light, then take a test shot.
2. Chances are, your flash will overpower the existing light. Now, go to your flash unit itself, lower the flash output power by one stop, and take another test shot.
3. Look at the LCD panel on the back of your camera, and see if the light from your flash still looks obvious, like light from a flash.
4. If it does, lower the power of your flash another 1/2-stop and shoot another test shot.
5. Keep lowering the power and shooting a test shot until you're getting just enough flash to light your subject.

That way, it looks real, directional, and natural, instead of looking like flash. It might take you five or six test shots to dial in the right amount of power, but your digital camera doesn't cost anything to do test shots. Try as many as you need until you strike that perfect balance between ambient light and the light from your flash.

Techniques of using cameras flashes