{"id":1322,"date":"2009-07-31T23:49:08","date_gmt":"2009-08-01T03:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetneil.com\/tangents\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2020-06-13T19:37:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T23:37:26","slug":"metering-for-off-camera-flash-start-with-ambient-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/metering-for-off-camera-flash-start-with-ambient-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Metering for off-camera flash? – start with the ambient light!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Metering for off-camera flash? – start with the ambient light!<\/h1>\n

In the tutorial on balancing flash with ambient light<\/a>, various scenarios are listed in where we start with our camera settings. My advice is that we invariably have to start with the ambient light. That will anchor our decision\u00a0to an extent, and will determine how the final image looks.<\/p>\n

This photo is from a\u00a0photography workshop<\/a>\u00a0I presented in Birmingham, UK in 2009. In the\u00a0afternoon session we used softboxes with manual flash\u00a0to photograph the two models.\u00a0And yes, the models did indeed stop the pedestrian traffic.<\/p>\n

Camera settings: 1\/200th @ f4 @ 200 ISO<\/p>\n

Camera settings were determined by how bright we wanted the background.\u00a0Without flash, the models were completely under-exposed as you can see in this next photo without flash. This made it easy to light them with the softboxes to give proper exposure.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Direction<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
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Direction & Quality of Light<\/h2>\n

I wanted to distill the essence of what we, as photographers, work with – light! Before we can truly grasp on-camera flash and off-camera flash, and really, any kind of photography, we have to be aware of the direction and quality of light. We need to observe the light that we have, and then decide how best to use it, or enhance it.<\/p>\n

With this book, I try my best to share those \u201caha!\u201d moments with you, and I do believe this book can make a difference to your photography.<\/p>\n

The book is available on\u00a0Amazon USA<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Amazon UK<\/a><\/strong>, or can be ordered through Barnes & Nobles and other bookstores. The book\u00a0is also available on the Apple iBook Store, as well as Amazon Kindle.\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>

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We purposely positioned them there in this pedestrian walkway between the shops. The camera settings were chosen so that our background exposed properly. Then we added manual flash in softboxes, and we metered for this to give us f4 @ 200 ISO, by using flashmeters and changing the power setting on the speedlights accordingly.<\/p>\n

We used two softboxes, each with a Nikon SB-900 speedlight set to manual.\u00a0We used one softbox to camera left, and one softbox behind them as a rim light. That background light\u00a0was held up high, in about a 1 o’clock position to camera right\u00a0 .. juuust out of shot. (The flash\u00a0behind them was the same power and distance as the main light.)<\/p>\n

The background brightness did vary a\u00a0fair amount\u00a0as clouds moved in and out.\u00a0So the background does appear a bit darker .. but that’s the beauty of\u00a0using manual\u00a0flash here .. it stays the same. We could of course compensate to an extent\u00a0for the background brightness by changing our shutter speed – our only independent control for ambient light. Changing ISO and aperture for the ambient light, would also change the exposure for manual flash.<\/p>\n

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Related articles<\/h2>\n