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...
Over the course of the past year or so, I've made a steady attempt to move this blog away from being wedding-heavy, and take the material more towards general photography, and photographing people.
However, since the most of my work is as done as a wedding photographer in New Jersey, I still get a large number of questions which relate to wedding photography - and specifically, photographing the reception. So I thought I would expand a little on the techniques I use in photographing wedding receptions.
A few years back, I would Read more inside...
A question that I was asked via email, that I thought would be of interest to everyone:
When using ambient light, I understand that you set your exposure using the camera's manual mode, then use flash to fill in. My question, when your shutter speed goes below that usually used hand-held, do you count on the speed of the flash to produce a sharp image or go to tripod or monopod? Or, increase either ISO or f-stop until you reach and acceptable shutter speed?
This is entirely correct in that I usually increase my ISO or open my aperture, Read more inside...
Generally, you wouldn't use flash to photography fireworks. But when you have someone in the foreground, then it becomes useful to have your subject lit up with flash, to balance them with the background (the fireworks display.)
Photographing people with fireworks in the background, is just an application of the technique known as dragging the shutter. I had the couple in an area where there wasn't much ambient light, so that I could light them mostly with flash. The strobe was a Quantum T2 with an umbrella, used in manual.
My flash exposure Read more inside...
