Why Your On-Camera Flash Looks Bad and the Exact Settings That Fix It

Most flash photos fail because the background and the subject are fighting each other. This video shows how a few deliberate camera choices decide which one wins before the flash even fires.

Coming to you from Tom Jurjaks, this beginner-friendly video lays out a clean mental model: the camera exposure handles the background, and the flash exposure handles the subject. Jurjaks starts with TTL (“through the lens”) and treats it like what it is, an automatic guess that can drift when distance changes, clothing is dark or light, or reflections throw off the meter. It sets expectations and keeps you from blaming yourself when the output shifts between frames. He also makes a practical point that gets skipped in a lot of quick tips: TTL is not “no control,” since you can still steer the flash result with compensation.

The next step is HSS (high-speed sync), and the trade is presented in plain terms instead of hype. Jurjaks gives a sync-speed reference around 1/250 s on the a7 IV, then shows why bright outdoor scenes push you into faster shutter speeds that exceed that limit. You can keep a wide aperture like f/1.4 and still hold the background, but HSS costs you flash power and slows recycling because the flash pulses rather than firing one clean burst. That loss of power turns into a distance problem fast, especially when you expect the flash to reach across a bigger scene. If you have ever wondered why your outdoor flash shots feel inconsistent even with “correct” settings, this section will feel uncomfortably familiar.

From there, the process becomes very methodical: set the camera in manual, turn the flash off, and decide how bright the background should be before you add any flash at all. In darker places, Jurjaks floats shutter speeds in the 1/200 s to 1/80 s range, with a warning about ghosting if you go too slow, which is a real-world issue when ambient light starts painting trails. Outdoors, he leans on keeping ISO low, choosing aperture for depth of field, then using shutter speed (often with HSS enabled) to land the background exposure where you want it. Only then does the flash come on, which is the part most people rush into when they are stressed about missing the shot. He also touches on a detail that matters more than it sounds: matching flash zoom to the lens, including an example where a Sony 24-70mm behaves differently than a Viltrox 50mm prime when it comes to automatic zoom behavior.

The strongest part is where angle and bounce take over, because this is where on-camera flash stops looking like on-camera flash. Jurjaks treats shadows as the main lever: change the angle, change the shadow direction, change the face. Straight-on flash stays an option when there is nothing to bounce from, but he spends more time on bouncing off ceilings and walls, using a pull-out bounce card, and bouncing to the side to create shape that can pass as a larger light source. There is also a caution that many people learn too late: bounce surfaces tint the light, so wood, paint, or warm rock can contaminate skin tone in ways that are annoying to fix later, and that problem starts at capture. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Jurjaks.