Good flash photography will always look like a flash was not used. Back in the day, most of us probably took flash pictures that look something was lit up with a flashlight in a dark cave. The goal is to avoid this look.
I typically use bounce flash to avoid this look. If you have a white ceiling or a ceiling that is close to white, you can use this technique. I use a Nikon SB-700, which has a built-in bounce flash bounce card that you can pull out. If you don’t have a flash bounce card, you can just use a piece of paper and a rubber band to attach to your flash. The card helps to redirect light in the forward direction. Here is what my SB-700 looks like with the bounce flash card pulled out.
Typically, you want to put the flash at about a 45-degree angle. If you get closer to a subject, you will need to increase the angle of the flash. For me, I typically choose ISO 200 and set the f-stop at f/5.6. I could shoot ISO 64, which would be better, but this will drain my flash since more light would be needed, and my D850 has no noise at ISO 200. As for shutter speed, it doesn’t matter in this case. I wanted to only use the light from the flash and not have any ambient light show in the photo. If you are in a large room and want to have more ambient light use a lower shutter speed and f-stop. You also can use a higher ISO to increase the ambient light. All this will avoid the flashlight look in a big room. For most flash photography, I recommend a shutter speed between 1/125 to your camera’s highest flash sync speed. For white balance, use the flash white balance or set your camera to 5700 Kelvin. If you are shooting raw, it doesn’t matter what white balance you use since you can adjust in post. I always recommend shooting raw for flash photography. When using bounce flash, I find the camera tends to underexpose. I recommend setting the flash compensation between .3 to .7 stops overexposure.
Here are some pictures I took of my cat James. I used bounce flash in all of my photos. The light was diffused because I bounced it off of my ceiling. As always, if you do it right, your pictures will not look like they were shot with a flash.
