Ah, the grossly misunderstood flash. One of my favorite moments from The Simpsons is when sportscasters at the Super Bowl wonder aloud if the thousands of spectators at the game know that the flash on their cameras is useless as they snap away at players on the field a quarter mile below. I've seen people use a flash to shoot pictures out of airplane windows, through the glass at the zoo, and at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Short-Range Flash

So, when should you use the flash on your digital camera? The simple answer is: when it will help to illuminate the subject. The flash on almost all digital cameras today has a range of about 10 or 15 feet, tops (check your manual to find the exact distance). If you're shooting a subject farther away than that, turn the flash off. It'll save some wear and tear on the batteries, and may yield a better picture if the camera isn't locked into a flash-related shutter speed.

Some digital cameras include a jack to connect a more powerful external flash unit. If you take a lot of flash pictures and want to extend the reach of your flash to 20 or 30 feet, you might want to invest in a compatible external flash.

Red-Eye Stutter

Your camera probably has a red-eye reduction mode that's handy for reducing or even eliminating the ugly red-eye effect that happens when you photograph people in a dark room. Beware, though--turning on red eye mode adds a short delay to the exposure process.

When you press the shutter release, the camera "pre-flashes" your scene to accustom the subject's eyes to the bright flash. If you're not expecting it, you might move the camera just when the picture is taken, and you know what that means--a blurry picture. It sounds silly, but it's actually pretty easy to move the camera at the wrong moment if you're not used to the extra time red-eye mode adds to the exposure process.

Preventing Overexposure

While a camera's flash is pretty smart, it's not perfect. I've found that many digital cameras tend to accidentally overexpose close-ups, for instance. Since few cameras give you manual control over the power of the flash, I've come up with a homebrewed solution: facial tissues.

If you shoot a picture that looks clearly overexposed because of the flash, just take a bit of tissue or thin cloth and cover the flash head. Re-shoot the picture and compare the results. The beauty of this solution is that you can fine-tune the amount of flash exposure just by varying the thickness of the tissue. (And no, don't worry about starting a fire--modern flash units don't get remotely warm enough to ignite a tissue.)

Dave's Favorites: Presenter-to-Go

Back in the days of yore, slide shows were packed with dry, generic clip art. These days, digital cameras have enabled presenters to load PowerPoint slide shows with shots captured hours earlier with a digital camera. While you're modernizing, consider one of my favorite business toys: Margi's Presenter-to-Go, a peripheral that lets you deliver a complete, full-resolution PowerPoint presentation by connecting your PDA directly to a projector or VGA display.

Presenter-to-Go comes in two flavors: a Springboard module for the Handspring Visor and a CompactFlash card for Pocket PC devices. In either form, Presenter-to-Go can potentially make your notebook computer obsolete.

I love this gadget; it's really fun to stroll into a conference room with just a Handspring Visor. And unlike a laptop, the Visor fires up the presentation virtually instantly. Priced at about $300, Presenter-to-Go is not particularly inexpensive--but it's the ultimate in portable presentations.

Q&A: End of the Road for My Memory Card?

I have a year-old 32MB SmartMedia card that seems to have stopped working properly in my digital camera. Is there a way to fix it?

-- Pete Case, Portland, Oregon

I've heard from a few people with this sort of problem. I'm aware of two possible causes, and there may be more. First, SmartMedia cards are pretty delicate. They're wafer-thin and have important electrical contacts exposed right on the surface. If you've damaged the card, which isn't altogether out of the question, it's now a really small beverage coaster. Throw it away with the knowledge that--thanks to the recent price plunge--you can now replace it for pocket change.

Recently, though, I asked an engineer from a memory card company about your problem, and he offered a second theory. It seems that certain activities can change the formatting or fill the header information on the card with gibberish, rendering it unable to store digital pictures. He had this advice: Don't use the same SmartMedia card in more than one kind of portable device, and if you insert it into your PC to copy pictures, don't use the Windows Explorer interface to copy the files--open the card using My Computer. You can try to revive the card by using the Format command in the camera's menu system, but if that doesn't work, you're probably out of luck.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We're disqualifying some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions aren't following the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in the e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter:

Send us your photograph in JPG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels, to hotpic@pcworld.com. Entries at higher resolutions will be disqualified immediately. Include the title of your photo, along with a short description of the photo and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address, or your entry will not be considered. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This week's Hot Pic: Flying Gull, by Howard Schiff, Roslyn, New York

Howard says: "As you know, there is a delay in snapping pictures with a digital camera, so I was lucky to catch this bird ready to fly. When I snapped the picture his wings were not yet extended, but to my pleasant surprise he timed it just right for me to catch this pose. I took it with an Olympus 3000Z on auto-exposure. I added the background of the sunset later from a different picture, which I downloaded from a Web site of sunset pictures."

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