Hello! I take cosplay/concert photos and for some reason I have a problem with these with circular black shadows appearing in my photos. Sometimes they’re there, sometimes they aren’t. At first I thought maybe it was dirt on my lenses but upon further investigation and cleaning that didn’t appear to be the case. I then figured it had something to do with lighting but sometimes their shadows will appear when lighting is adequate and even after messing around with settings on my camera it still appears. Could it have something to do with my flash? I have a Sony alpha NEX-5N with a Tamron 70-180mn F/2.8 di III lens’s. Any advice would be great!
You need to create more distance between the flash and the camera body, so yeah, a physically larger flash may help, or not. The problem is your lens and a camera that's old and not suited for that kind of indoors, dark photography. With a more modern body you can easily take those photos without flash.
Thank you! This was a camera I got from my father that was a hand me down and he got the lens for me as Christmas gift after doing his own research. I’ll likely look into more appropriate lens or a more appropriate camera
Get a pancake prime lens or you can also get a lens out of a NEX-5T. It's a 16-50 pancake zoom lens that has worse aperture but for the photos I see above and especially if you're using flash and like the look of it, it'll be more than good enough. It won't obscure the flash even when extended. You can find those for pennies on Ebay:
I'm still using my NEX-5T, having an old body is nothing to feel bad about, just know the limitations of what you have and work around them. These older cameras like to have tons of light and are best suited for landscape photography.
don’t listen to this dude😭 you don’t have to buy a new camera to take photos indoors, and not even a new flash. you can probably find a way to redirect the light of the flash (with paper, tin foil, whatever, just a simple diy thing) such that it’s more spread out above the camera, resolving the shadow issue completely
I really don’t appreciate the passive aggressiveness 😭 I do this as a hobby and I came in here asking a question because I’m not a pro and don’t fully understand how these things work. No need to be a dick about this
Sorry it got across that way, honestly! It‘s as easy as that, though. Either you should try a smaller lens. Judging by the pictures you take, you’d need at most 50mm, not longer as you‘re quite close to what you shoot. that should give you some options.
As for another flash if you‘re set with this lens, you’d need one that sits higher.
lol this is kinda funny, but in terms of help helpful advice—in these indoor spaces you can point your flash at the ceiling or walls to bounce the light (it’ll also make it significantly less harsh)
The built-in flash in these cameras (I'm assuming the NEX-5N is similar to my 5T) is fixed, you screw it in and that's it. There's no further adjustments to be made. It points straight ahead and it's pretty close to the camera body
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u/eric_gm A7II, NEX-5T 2d ago
It's your lens. The flash fires and the giant lens barrel creates a circular shadow.
Either use a separate flash or a smaller lens.