Using flash in a cell phone.

Top:  photo taken with cell phone with (left) and without (right) flash.  
Bottom:  photo take with DSLR camera with (left) and without (right) external flash.

Your smartphone comes with a built-in flash which, seems awesome until you actually use it.  Suddenly, you are left to wonder if it is even going off because there seemed to be no impact on the shot.  If there was, it was totally anemic, working something like a flashlight with batteries that were seconds away from absolute death.

That experience is not uncommon.  It turns out that cell phone flashes are totally different from those on DSLR, mirrorless, and compact cameras.  Those flashes use glass tubes filled with xenon gas and have a highly charged capacitor to blast thousands of volts through the gas.  The resulting plasma releases a tremendous amount of nicely coloured light that is bright enough to do the job.  If you need more power, you simply put an external unit on.

Cell phones use LED technology.  Although bright, they pale in comparison to xenon flashes.  They also achieve maximum brightness much slower than regular camera units.  You have to use slow shutter speeds, high ISOs, and be very close to your subject.  This then means that you can't use the phone's flash to fill during the day because the faster shutter speeds in conjunction with the lower ISO means that the flash distance is under a foot.

In short, don't expect great things from your cell phone's flash.  It doesn't have the power to do much unless you are using it in a very dark environment.  Even then, you may not care for the results.  The white balance is far from great and you may end up with off-coloured images.

On the up-side, it is there and so you might want to play with it to see what it can do.  Shooting in darker environments, using low shutter speeds and high ISOs, you should be able to get some impact.  However, at the end of the day, you may just get better results by turning on the lights in the room.  Those are bright enough to make a difference.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com