Inappropriate Flashing

My friend, Justin, told me a while back: "Don't use flash!". I'm sure he said it more strenuously than this, like "Using flash is the worst pain ever...your mom!".

He was, of course, referring to flashes on digital cameras. These devices of pure blinding brilliance are almost always amped up way too much, creating the most amateurish results. Yet, camera company after camera company insist on making a flash that's far too strong.

Worse still, you can't even control it. Wouldn't it be nice to say "80% flash" or adjust some number that would reduce the flash by the amount it thought was necessary? I know there's some doodad that attempts to measure how much light makes it into the lens, and then turns off the flash, all done in fractions of a second.

You'd think some camera company would catch on. That it would serve as a product differentiator. They could say "our camera does flash right!". But instead, they doom the average photographer to crappy photos. David Pogue, save us! Your humorous vlogs will repair an oversight that has gone far too long!