I, Neil, and a lot of others generally just zoom right in manually on flash head, 105mm for Canon, 200mm for Nikon.

The reason being is that a lot of light is lost travelling to the source during bounce, and having a wider zoom setting defeats the purpose since the bounce can be concentrated more as it will diffuse off the bounce-source anyway.

Trev.

Thanks for the respond. And yes, I couldn’t agree more that shooting in Aperture priority mode are solely depend on the system “suggested” exposure. I guess I’ll just have to switch that dial from “A” to “M” from now on… :S

However, could you kindly please advice on question no:
3.) Do you set your flash zoom to its max or auto zoom during bouncing (TTL)?

Thanks again for your time in replying me question.

js-chong … as you can see, you have to do a lot of second-guessing about what your camera is doing, and then have to adjust the over-all exposure compensation and the flash exposure compensation. It becomes a mad juggling process in my opinion. And that’s because you insist on shooting in aperture priority.

It is for this reason that I shoot nearly exclusively in manual metered mode on my camera. It makes my life simpler.

So I really can’t answer your question with the knowledgeable thoroughness that you expect.

Hopefully someone else might chime in who does shoot that way.

Neil vN

I’d like to say thank you for being so generous in sharing your knowledge particularly in flash photography! Thank you, thank you and thank you!
Here I’ve a few questions for you and need your help to answer these:
1.) I shoot almost exclusively in Aperture priority mode, will this limit me in “balancing flash with ambient exposure”?
2.) if it doesn’t, then I understand that with Aperture priority mode it left 3 parameters for me to play around and that would be: ISO, overall exposure compensation and flash exposure compensation.
3.) Did you set your flash zoom to it max or auto zoom during bouncing (TTL)?

And last question, I’ve tried to read and understand those articles written by you regarding the topic of “balancing flash with ambient exposure”, “dragging the shutter”, “dragging the shutter-revisited” and this one “when aperture does NOT control flash exposure”. It’s not easy for me to understand it 100% now if I don’t start with practical test. So I’d like to let you know if I insist in shooting with Aperture priority mode where should I begin with if I’ve bellow scenario which is the most common scenario I encounter:
a.) subject is lit very little and background is in low light
b.) background is very bright and subject is underexpose/under shade

My objective is to register the background light source as well in my final output. So can you kindly please guide me which parameters to start adjust/configure with in sequence. Eg. ISO first, overall exposure compensation second and flash exposure compensation come in third.

Reminder: I’ll be shooting in Aperture priority and TTL.

With the guide, I hope I can start to experiment with it and hopefully through the practical I’ll get the idea of their relation. And for now I’ll just keep repeating these 4 articles, is there’s any that’s related to “balancing flash with ambient exposure” that I’ve missed out please do let me know. Please excuse my English as it’s not my native language, shall you need any clarification regarding above question, please do let me know, many thanks!

Dave … check the two top-most articles listed here on this page about off-camera flash. It explains the thought process. Even though those articles deal with off-camera flash, it is just as valid for on-camera flash.

Greg .. in this instance, I didn’t bounce over my left shoulder, but rather to my left, and a little bit forward towards the model. I used the black foamie thing to block the light from my flash directly hitting her.

Neil vN