Lighting Situations

I used my girlfriend's stuffed penguin as my model this week. You will see four shots here. Top shot is no flash with the bright outside light shining through the windows from below. Below that is no flash, curtains closed so essentially no light (as if you couldn't tell there was no light). Second from the bottom is no flash with a spotlight below and overhead light on. Bottom picture is same as one above it but with flash. I think the biggest thing I noticed was that between the two bottom pictures, the one taken with no flash is much sharper than the one with flash. There was so much light in the picture already that the flash wasn't really needed and didn't really help the situation at all. It was interesting as I played around with the lights inside and out how I could make the picture barely visible to very sharp depending on whether the flash was on or not. I took a picture with the lights all off and the flash on as well, and it came out the best. I couldn't tell where I was pointing the camera because the room was so dark, but once the flash went off and the picture was taken, as long as it was pointed in the right direction it came out pretty good.