Hi there Romo …

What you’re attempting to do there falls outside the capabilities of what you could achieve with a single speedlight.

There are 3 main areas of different light there …
her face, the brick background, and the blown-out skies.
(This is not counting her hand which is not as shaded as her face.)

It would be impossible to bring all 3 (or 4) those areas into the same exposure range with just one flash.

So even if you used flash to bring up exposure on her to the same level as the sky, you’d have the brick architecture behind her fall into darkness … unless you used additional lighting there. But then this becomes A Big Production.

Much simpler would be to position her so that the background is more neutral, and then use flash to lift detail on her.

Neil vN.

There was something that I don’t quite grasp yet (or maybe I do)? I’ve read that the key for balancing ambient light and flash for outdoor shooting is to meter the ambient with the shutter speed and the aperture for the impact of the flash lighting in the final picture. So if this is true, that means when I adjust the shutter speed the flash impact is unaffected, but doesn’t that mean when i adjust the aperture it changes both flash and ambient light?

Today, for example, I was in a tricky situation that I wasn’t sure of. This is one of the results of my shot:

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/9288/img8306mb9.jpg

Basically, my technical info was as follows:

60mm
1/250
f2.8
FEC was dialed to about -1
bounced off of the wall to my right

The background still seems to be blown out despite me being at 1/250 and 100 ISO, my trouble came with my aperture. Do I change my aperture to meter correctly for the background ambience (as to match my 1/250, which seems to not be enough) and simply use more FEC to get the foreground, since the aperture change will affect the model’s ability to be lit by flash? Do I keep the F stop and go into high sync mode? This just seems like a balance that I have a fundamental misunderstanding about.

Thanks, Neil!

Robert,

Sure you could use TTL, as long as you remain within the range of what the speedlight is capable of. The main drawback with using wireless TTL in the scenario above, is to keep line-of-sight and make sure the speedlight triggers.

To that end, a radio slave is just easier. It works. Every time.

Neil vN.

Neil,
You say “Now find your correct (manual) flash exposure”. Can you use TTL in this situation as well?

Rob

Phil,

In this kind of scenario where we have bright available light, the only real way of controlling the exposure is via the choice of aperture. So you’re stuck with fairly small apertures in bright light … unless you can go to the option of high-speed-sync.

Then you can choose wider apertures, and higher shutter speeds.
And I think this is what you’re looking for, and need to play around with.

best of luck

Neil vN.

Your techniques are almost textbook for me, and I have learned so much from reading about how you do things and combined with my practicing of them, i’ve already gotten better results.

However, I do have a question on one item. Given that you are shooting with flash outdoors, have the max flash sync speed, lowest ISO, would the only expense be to adjust the aperture accordingly to achieve a correct exposure?

My reason for asking is that when I started shooting outdoors, I noticed that I have to “give-up” the ability for a shallow depth of field to keep from simply overexposing. I needed some flash to keep some shadows off of the model’s face, and, of course, using a smaller aperture the flash is less effective.

What would be some tips for these particular instances? Am I doing right by keeping ISO 100, shutter maxed at 250, and only changing F stop?

Thanks!

Very true. Thanks for the response, Neil. And, I really wasn’t going to ask what aperture you used… honest!

-Matt

Stephen, thank you for the heads-up. I fixed the link now.

Neil.