Friday, March 26, 2010

How To Use Flash During The Day.

Have you ever had a photo that looked all blown out like this?


Here is the problem. When I took this shot, my daughter was in the shade. The light meter in my camera took the exposure reading off her face. Since she was in the shade, the background became too bright.

So, to solve this problem I needed to add more light to the subject so that the light in front balanced better with the light in the background.  

By using my on camera flash I got this:




See the difference!  The exposure is balanced in this photo.

So next time you are out taking shots and you have a background that is too light, try this technique and see what you get.
BTW, I know this isn't the best shot of my daughter. In fact the pose is terrible. but I posted it to show the technique. 

Hope you enjoyed this tip. Let me know what you think by adding a comment.

Thanks:)

Posted by at 9:49 PM
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11 comments:

  1. Nice, valuable tip, thanks!
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  2. I used to try it .
    It's help me a lot
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  3. Hi - did you just pop the built-in flash? With all due respect, this is not so much "How To Use Flash During The Day", rather "Use Flash During The Day in certain conditions" - do you have any flash tutorials? Thanks
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  4. Yes I did use my pop up flash. I do agree I could have named the post better also. It should be more like "how to use your flash to get better balanced shots during the day" or something like that. Also, yes I do have other flash tutorials on my blog. If you go a few pages back you will run into them. Thanks for the comment Anonymous, It is apreciated!
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  5. it should be added that most of the time the on camera flash needs to be tamed cause it might be too bright and freeze the scene so it's useful to use the flash compensation to add just a fill light to the subject
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  6. How about using a circular polarizer? Wouldn't that be, if not better, then at least as good?
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  7. Jakob, I polarizer would not help in this situation. A ploarizer will darken a sky, or take reflection off of windows, but it will not balance the light in the background to the light in the foreground. What I was doing with the flash in the photos was balancing light. Thanks for the question!!
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  8. Great tip. I'm a beginner at photography. Thanks for sharing.
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  9. will a ND filter help ?
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    Replies
    1. Not is this situation. An ND filter would darken the whole picture. A split ND filter would not work either. It would darken half of the photo. What I was doing when taking the photo in this tutorial was increasing the light on the subject(my daugher) and keeping the same light in the background. She was in the shade of a building that was behind me. In the first photo she is actually darker and so the exposure is off and the background is blown out. In the second shot, she is actually being brightened and because she has more light falling on her the light in the background shows up darker.
      What I would suggest you do is recreate the shot if you can. Take a subject outside and put it in the shade. The background should have light on it. Then shoot a shot without your flash and see what happens. After that shoot the same shot with your flash on and see what happens. Thanks for the question. hopefully I have explained it ok. This is a hard thing to understand. If you don't get it let me know and I will try to explain it in a different way.
      Delete

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