Point-and-shoot cameras today give you several options for using the flash, but it isn’t always easy to know which option is best. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the settings on your camera, and read the tips below to find out how best to use those settings.

• Using the red eye reduction flash can keep your friends and family from looking like creatures of the night, and save you the time of fixing the creepy red glows in your photo editing software. Your camera will fire a short pre-flash, causing your subjects eyes pupils to constrict, so the light of the main flash won’t reflect off of the insides of their dilated eyes.

• Turn your flash off in low light. I know it’s counterintuitive, but on-camera flashes aren’t very good for brightening up dark rooms and can often leave your subjects looking like they’re in a dark cave. This is because the camera automatically uses a short shutter speed when the flash is on, making it impossible for your camera to pick up the dimmer ambient light in the scene. Without the flash you’ll have a longer shutter speed, so your cameras sensor will have time to gather that dimmer light.

• Some cameras give you the best of both worlds by providing a ‘slow synch speed’ setting. This means your flash will fire, but your shutter speed will also be long so the ambient light will also show up in your final shot. This can also be achieved through the manual settings on some point-and-shoot cameras, by setting your shutter speed to around 1/30 of a second and turning your flash to ‘forced on,’ represented by the lightning bolt symbol on most cameras.

• Use your flash during the day! When you’re outside and have both shaded and sunlit areas in the same scene, your flash is invaluable. The contrast between shadowy and lighted areas is too much for your camera to capture, so you end up with overexposed sunlit areas, or deep black shadows. Using the on camera flash (set to ‘forced on’) as a fill flash will reduce this contrast and give you pictures that are closer to what your eye sees. This is a great technique for photographing people in front of sunsets. Their faces will be properly lit, and the sunset colors will still show up behind them.

• Your on-camera flash has a range of about 15 feet. Try to get at least that close to your subject or you will end up with dark, murky pictures.

• Diffuse the light! Naked flashes can make for sharp shadows and unattractive reflections on people’s skin. To create a softer light, diffuse the flash by taping a piece of thin paper or even tissue over the flash. The range of your flash will decrease, but for portraits this technique makes all the difference. You can also have fun creating special effects with colored plastic wrap, or gels from your local camera store.