Exposure metering for the bride’s dress
Exposure metering - bride & the bride's dress
From a technical point of view, photographing a bride in her dress can be a challenge ... depending on the lighting. If everything is under your control as the photographer, and you're lighting the formal portraits with off-camera manual flash, then it is essentially a study of the zone system. The simplest way for me then to get accurate exposure, is to use the histogram. I place my brightest relevant tone at the edge of the histogram. All the other tones will fall into place. (It is clearly explained in that linked article, Read more inside...Photographing wedding portraits in bright sunlight
Photographing wedding portraits in bright sunlight
Hard sunlight overhead is some of the most difficult light that you can find yourself shooting in. When you aren't able to position your subjects, then your options are limited - fill-flash or working with the RAW file in post-processing. However, when you're able to move your subjects, but don't have the opportunity for off-camera lighting, then your best two options are: - have your subjects turn their backs to the sun, - use the light from the sun so that there are no harsh cross-shadows. Here are typical examples of Read more inside...tutorial: Balancing flash with ambient exposure
tutorial: Balancing flash with available light / ambient exposure
Many of the questions I get on the Tangents blog relate to balancing flash with available light, and I want to pull it all together into a single article. The questions often revolve around metering for the ambient light, and how to balance flash with the ambient light. Tied in with this, is how to make the decision about which camera settings are the best. It's a juggling act, balancing all the factors quickly enough ... and still being able to deliver solid photos. The answer to the questions about how to Read more inside...Exposure metering: Photographing in snow
Exposure metering: Photographing in snow
I had the pleasure challenge of photographing this super-cute Jack Russell terrier, Sundae. She just loves snow! After one of the heavy snowstorms, we went to a park where I could photograph her acrobatically snatching at bits of snow hurled at her. The exposure metering for the snow was the least of the challenges here. It might have been the easiest part of photographing this fast-moving dog. This is a white dog on white snow. Fortunately, it was overcast, so the light was very even / flat. (One man's meat / even light, is another man's Read more inside...combining flash and ambient light
combining flash and ambient light
Going by the emails that I receive, one of the areas that many photographers struggle with is that of combining ambient exposure and flash exposure. This question is also expressed in other ways. It can be a frustrated, "where do we even start?" I also often see it expressed as an involved step-by-step deconstruction of technique, making the entire process more complex than it is. In reply to that, and many other emails I've received in the past few months, I'd like to offer an analysis of a few images from a recent shoot. One of my Read more inside...When aperture does NOT control flash exposure
When aperture doesn't control the flash exposure
The axioms regarding flash photography that get thrown around most often, are: ambient exposure is controlled by shutter speed, flash exposure is controlled by aperture. While these are true, there's also an over-simplification happening here. Just rallying those two statements in a perfunctory manner, we actually lose understanding of how flash and ambient exposures actually inter-relate. The problem with the first statement is that it disregards that aperture and ISO both control ambient exposure as Read more inside...Zones of Light – exposure metering using the Zone System
A recent thread on the Flick group on flash photography techniques dealt with exposure metering .. and the questions revolved around understanding your camera's built in meter. One of the group members, Arnold Gallardo (Zeroneg1), replied with a lucid explanation on exposure metering, relating it to the Zone System in a clear understandable way, using images from my blogs. I'd like to present this article by Arnold Gallardo as the latest guest spot on this blog. I might not have such a specific linear approach to metering any more during the actual shoot, since with practice it becomes Read more inside...
How much flash exposure compensation?
How much flash exposure compensation?
With the recent posts on lighting the formal wedding photos with bounce flash, the question came up, "How much flash exposure compensation (FEC) was used?" (FEC) was used. (The image above is from the sequence.) I thought it would make a good separate short article on the topic. My settings for that photograph: 1/100th @ f3.2 @ 800 ISO and flash was bounced TTL flash. How much FEC did I dial in? I could answer that my FEC was +0.7 EV, but that numerical value might not contain enough real information ... Read more inside...exposure metering and adding flash
A question that came in regarding material covered in the book on flash photography techniques .. Sven Pohle asked: I am reading through your book (second time already) and have a question about metering plus adding the flash. I do meter for a white tone in my image and add +1.7 or 2 (I'm on Nikon) to my exposure. Now without flash my image is exposed correctly. But if I add the flash then the white starts to blow out as it does add flash light to it. So this is there i am confused. Would you rather go and meter for the background to get that right and then just add the flash to bring the Read more inside...