Hi there Amanda ..

To over-power the sun, could mean adding enough flash to harsh sunlight to help ease the contrast. More often, it means setting your exposure such that the sunlight is under-exposed, and then adding enough flash to give you correct exposure.

So a typical approach would be to meter for the scene, and under-expose by 2/3 or 1 stop. Or more. Or less. And then dump enough light from your flash to expose correctly.

I hope this helps.

Neil vN

Question… I’ve seen it posted before and you mentioned it here that you “need a lot of juice to match bright sunlight”. Or, in other shoots that you needed to overpower the sun with your light.

From a technical stand-point, how did you overpower the sun? Did you incident meter the subject first and get the reading and then set your flash to be more powerful than that reading? Or, what is your method that when, in broad daylight, you can “overpower the sun” so the lighting “power” is then in your hands and controllable?

You always explain your methods in easy-to-understand terms, so I’m looking forward to learning more on this. THANKS! -Amanda

Bjoern … I have started to add the focal length to the data when it is relevant.

With this image though, an educated guess about the focal length will most likely be correct. Or close enough. The perspective tells all. What do you think it would be? :)

Neil vN

Bjoern

David … as you noticed, 1/250 isn’t fast enough to freeze action like this. So I did try to catch her at the peak of her jump, just at that moment that she is weightless in the air.

I did the update for ACR5.7 but haven’t looked yet at how the shadow detail is improved. Thank you for the info email. The updated processing does look better in the samples you showed.

Neil vN

I like it, her left leg must have been moving fast to still cause some motion blur at 1/250 sec while the rest of her body is frozen in time, or did you press the shutter just as she reached the apex of her jump? I also like the fact that Meagan looks like she is hanging onto the Parachute Jump, almost like she has just swung around on it.

PS: On a different subject, have you had chance to try ACR 5.7 yet? (Since sending you my e-mail the final version for both Mac and PC has now been released) :)

David

I’d encourage any photographer to attend as wide a variety of workshops as possible in order to benefit from the experience of people with different approaches. My own photography has improved more from attending workshops than it has from buying new kit (which I haven’t done much of recently) and I feel workshops are often overlooked by photographers looking to improve their skills and work output.

Jay … I’m inherently a little lazy. If I can effectively sweeten the image with just bounce flash, instead of carting around & setting up off-camera flash, then I’ll go with on-camera bounce flash.

Neil vN

In a situation where you could use either on-camera bounce flash or off-camera flash, what would you 1st choice be?

Jay