Flash vs natural light

The choice between natural light and flashes is an important decision in photography. Sometimes, the choice is easy – the flash is simply not allowed in many venues, such as museums, or at certain sporting events, such as swimming and martial arts competitions.

There are many good reasons for foregoing the flash: it disturbs the participants of the event, the referees, the audience, interferes with the photo-finish equipment and destroys the ambiance of the natural light. Another advantage of using just the natural light is the unmatched flexibility due to the  lack of strobes, light stands, light modifiers, cables and triggers (here is an example of a starter kit, but there is not limit to how complex a lighting setup can become). Being nimble is particularly important for sports photography. Often, it makes a difference between capturing the key shot that tells the story of the game or missing it.

The obvious downside of natural light photography is, potentially, high noise levels in the photos. Fortunately, modern DSLRs, such as Canon EOS-1D X or a more affordable Canon EOS 5D Mark III (Nikon’s counterparts are Nikon D4S and Nikon D810) handle high ISO very well, i.e. with fairly limited noise. Besides, noise can be somewhat controlled in post-processing.

On the other hand, the advantage of using strobes is not only the additional amount of light that they provide, but also total control of the lighting conditions that they enable. As a friend of mine remarked recently, using studio lights makes one learn about the light much faster than using the natural light alone. To me, this is a sufficiently good reason to use the lights, despite their cost, the inconvenience and even despite occasionally missing a shot. On the balance, I think both flash and natural light photography have their place, and both have been incredible fun to learn.