![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/kids\/Trento-kiddos-144-900.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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<\/strong>.\u00a0 This question\u00a0\u00a0is also expressed in other ways.\u00a0 It can be a\u00a0frustrated, “where do we even start?”\u00a0 I also often\u00a0see it expressed as an involved step-by-step\u00a0deconstruction of technique, making\u00a0the entire process more complex than it is.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n One of my favorite clients has the most adorable baby boy that she wanted some portraits of. I had to shoot fast, since his attention span was .. oh, zero. He’s still a baby! I also wanted to be able to cover myself in getting some available-light only portraits, and some with bounce flash.\u00a0\u00a0I didn’t want the flash to be overwhelmingly bright.\u00a0 And in bouncing the flash, there was also less chance of disturbing the baby.\u00a0 So I had to mix it up in order to get some variety, and be sure of images that worked.<\/p>\n The image at the top was shot with the Nikon D3 and the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S camera settings:\u00a0 1\/100 @ f4.5 @ 640 ISO, using TTL flash Now where the settings look like they\u00a0might be\u00a0informative, I also often feel that these numerical values are a diversion.\u00a0 Too many photographers will get hooked on the choice of f4.5 over another aperture.\u00a0 Why 1\/100th of a second?\u00a0 Why 640 ISO?<\/p>\n The truth is that this could’ve been a different combination of settings.\u00a0 What is important here, is the quality of light<\/strong>.\u00a0 It is our major concern here, and should interest us more than f4.5 at this moment.<\/p>\n The light on the baby’s face is directional<\/strong>.\u00a0 There is more light coming from camera left .. and from this you should be able to deduce that I did indeed bounce my flash to my left.\u00a0 Using that piece of black foam to flag my flash, I was able to get directional light like that.<\/p>\n The light is soft<\/strong>. Since I bounced my flash into the room<\/a>, and it bounced off the walls, and furniture, I will have soft light.<\/p>\n So those two aspects of the light from my flash\u00a0is easily understood – soft directional light.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now let’s look at how I chose to balance my flash with the available light …<\/p>\n In that bedroom there was enough light for available light portraits of the baby, and I made sure to get that. I shot this with the 85mm f1.4 since I needed the wide open aperture for two reasons – the low light levels, and for the specific look that the razor-thin depth-of-field would give me.\u00a0 Since the baby did move a fair amount in his mother’s arms, I machine gunned it to an extent to make sure I had a few key images that were actually crisply sharp.<\/p>\n There is the base exposure – my ambient light with no flash … for this specific scenario with the baby turned away from the window light in his mother’s arms.\u00a0 If I had moved position and shot with the incoming light, my exposure would obviously have been vastly different.\u00a0 But I wanted this high-key look.<\/p>\n So there I have the exposure at which the baby is correctly exposed for the ambient light.\u00a0 If I chose a slower shutter speed and higher ISO here, I’d have over-exposure.\u00a0 I can’t go “that way” in my exposure.\u00a0 Where I can go with my exposure … is under.\u00a0 I can under-expose my subject and then add flash to make up for the lack of ambient exposure.<\/p>\n So by how much can I under-expose my ambient light (and add flash for the difference)?\u00a0 Here we get to the crux of this article – how do you decide?\u00a0 How do you decide what your settings should be and how much flash should you add?<\/p>\n Here’s the answer … you<\/strong> decide.\u00a0\u00a0 There is such a wide range of possible settings here, that there is no real correct answer here.\u00a0 My main consideration is that the lighting (for my tastes) remain soft and directional and complements my subject.<\/p>\n Here is another image in the sequence, but with flash:<\/p>\n Camera settings:\u00a0 1\/80 @\u00a0f5.6 @ 640 ISO; \u00a0TTL bounce flash The shooting scenario was exactly the same – the baby’s back was towards the curtained window-light.<\/p>\n The difference in ambient exposure is just over 3 stops.\u00a0 Without the flash, the baby would’ve been severely under-exposed.\u00a0 So the light you see on him there is primarily the bounced flash.<\/p>\n How did I decide on my settings?\u00a0 To a fair extent they were random.\u00a0\u00a0Since f1.4 is such a shallow depth-of-field, I wanted to make sure I had images that were sharp, so I picked f5.6 … but it could’ve been f4 … or f4.5<\/p>\n Similarly, why 1\/80th shutter speed?\u00a0 It didn’t really matter.\u00a0 I don’t want to go too slow and risk camera shake, but I also didn’t quite need 1\/250th here.\u00a0 So anywhere sensible would be good.<\/p>\n Looking again at my base exposure – ambient light at 1\/200 @ f1.4 @ 1000 ISO … any exposure where I under-expose the ambient light, and then add flash, would’ve worked.\u00a0 I could’ve had a studio light (and risked the discomfort of the baby) at 1\/250th @ f11 @ 100 ISO.\u00a0\u00a0 Anything in between that, and the correct ambient-only exposure, would’ve worked.<\/p>\n That’s a HUGE range over which I could’ve had my settings.\u00a0 But in the end, I just need enough depth-of-field<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 And this time, I’m happy with an aperture of f5.6 but another mid-range aperture would’ve been fine too.\u00a0 I need the baby’s eyes in focus, even if he moves a little, and for that, f5.6 is fine.\u00a0\u00a0 The same kind of reasoning goes for the choice of shutter speed and ISO.<\/p>\n With that, let’s look at the top image again, and answer a few questions:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1\/100 @ f4.5 @ 640 ISO; TTL bounce flash<\/p>\n Why TTL flash and not manual flash? Why bounce flash and not the strobist route with a softbox?<\/strong> How did I meter for the TTL flash?<\/strong> How did I meter for the ambient light?<\/strong> <\/p>\n Ultimately, in using flash indoors like this, I want the ambient light under-exposed to an extent at least, so that with bounce flash, I can achieve an open, clean look.\u00a0 With this, the specific numeric values of my camera settings aren’t all that important.\u00a0 (I don’t want to go over maximum sync speed here though.)<\/p>\n My main concern is direction of light and quality of light … and concentrating on getting the endearing expressions that his mother wanted me to capture.\u00a0 Mood and expression<\/strong> – the essence of portrait photography.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –\u00a0how do you meter for TTL flash & ambient light<\/a> 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.\u00a0 This question\u00a0\u00a0is also expressed in other ways.\u00a0 It can be a\u00a0frustrated, “where do we even start?”\u00a0 I also often\u00a0see it expressed as an involved step-by-step\u00a0deconstruction Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111,14,15,22,33,1],"tags":[48,871,54,56,61,68],"yst_prominent_words":[8911,8904,8900,8913,8907,8902,8910,7927,8908,8903,1476,8905,8901,1265,1842,8914,8909,8912,8906,1415],"class_list":{"0":"post-2037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bounce-flash-photography","8":"category-exposure-metering","9":"category-flash-photography","10":"category-lighting","11":"category-portraits","12":"category-uncategorized","13":"tag-bounce-flash","14":"tag-flash-photography","15":"tag-flash-photography-technique","16":"tag-flash-photography-tips","17":"tag-how-to-bounce-flash","18":"tag-photographic-lighting","19":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2037"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33045,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions\/33045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2037"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLighting here was a combination of available light and\u00a0bounce flash.\u00a0 And as usual, I\u00a0used the black foamie thing<\/a> to flag the flash so NO light from the flashgun fell directly on the child.<\/p>\n
\nThe FEC was not recorded, but would’ve been around 0EV because my flash isn’t merely fill-flash here, but fairly dominant.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/kids\/Trento-kiddos-043-bw.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nCamera settings:\u00a0 1\/200 @ f1.4 @ 1000 ISO; no flash<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/kids\/Trento-kiddos-112-bw.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nHere again I used the 70-200mm f2.8 zoom, and at the 200mm setting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>No particular reason, except that I find TTL flash is faster to work with here.\u00a0 The TTL flash metering gives me a head-start in getting correct exposure.\u00a0 This I nudge up or down as I need to.<\/p>\n
\nSpeed and efficiency.\u00a0 I can be ready to shoot as I walk into the room.\u00a0 No setting-up required.\u00a0 Also, lack of space in the bedroom is a problem.\u00a0 Therefore, in this instance, bounce flash got the results I wanted, and much faster than I could’ve if I had decided to set up off-camera lighting.<\/p>\n
\nI pre-judged the scene.\u00a0 As mentioned earlier, the flash here isn’t mere fill-flash but more dominant than that.\u00a0 I also know from experience that a back-lit scene needs a bit more FEC than a normal scene.\u00a0 Therefore my FEC was around the 0EV range.\u00a0 Adjustment was to taste, according to what I saw on my camera’s preview.<\/p>\n
\nBy checking my camera’s built-in meter, and knowing I want the background to be lighter.\u00a0 It’s not an average tone.\u00a0 I could take my time and meter for the scene and decide on tonal values and get all Ansel Adams on this … or I could get a general reading from my camera, and take a test shot.\u00a0 I want the baby a tad under-exposed, so I can take up the slack with bounce flash.\u00a0 In doing it this way, I am able to open up the light on his face.<\/p>\nsummary<\/h2>\n
related articles<\/h2>\n
\n–\u00a0black foamie thing<\/a>
\n–\u00a0bounce flash portrait \u2013 a consistent technique<\/a>
\n–\u00a0my favorite lighting setup to photograph kids indoors \u2013 bounce flash!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"