Fill flash on a bright day making it look like cardboard cut outs

<p>I agree, the composition on that one was rubbish. It was just a good example of the problem. We were outside doing shots of the bridal party running away from the church that were great. Then the parents of the flower girl and ring bearer brought the kids out and said, here take a photo of them too with the bride and groom. I did one with fill flash, and one with ambient light. The ceremony went over an hour late, so when it came to this shot that the bride and groom didn't care about at all, I wasn't really that concerned with getting the perfect shot.</p>

<p>Also, Marc, thank you so much for sharing the different images. I loved the one with the background more OOF. While the other ones had a little card board cut out ness to them, I still thought they were beautiful shots. What I have to try to remember is to really take the time to get my settings right. Need to remind myself quality, not quantity! But when time gets super tight, or next to non-existent, it's tricky. Just gotta take a second and breathe and think. </p><div></div>

<p>Oh and William, you are fairly spot on. It was overexposed, but still it did have a bit of cardboard cutoutish appearance even then. The post processing in lightroom made it more obvious.</p>

<p>It's interesting that when you really are trying to make a montage of two images you often want it to look realistic and to accomplish that you need to match the lighting, the colors and contrast perfectly or the brain will detect that something looks "wrong". Tom Mann mentioned that earlier.</p>

<p>A lot of "fill" flash images look unrealistic because the flash is not used as a fill light but rather a main light. For instance if the subjects are lit from behind a proper exposure of the subject would make the background two stops overexposed. If we expose for the background instead the subject will be two stops underexposed. So we expose for the background and let the flash provide the main light for the subject. Since the majority of the light hitting the subject is now coming from the flash, the direction and quality of light does not match the background at all. So it looks unrealistic.</p>

<p>And you can get the same unrealistic effect with a reflector because when you reflect too much light the contrast of the subject and the background doesn't match. For instance an almost shadowless subject in front of a very contrasty harsh background.</p>

<p>For more realistic looking flash images in bright sun we need to imitate nature with our flash. We can push things a bit but if we go too far it will not look right.<br>

The three main things to look out for are:<br>

1) Too much flash light. For instance if the subject is in the shade it need to look "shady", not sunny.<br>

2) Wrong color temperature. For instance if the flash is imitating shade on a sunny day the flash need to look cold (blue) but if we are imitating the sun it need to look warm (yellow and even red at sunset).<br>

3) Direction, angle and size of the light. For instance open shade is often direction-less because the light comes from everywhere. To simulate that we would need a large light source, either a large reflector, flash bouncing of something or flash through a large umbrella or similar.</p>

<p>As wedding photographers we need to compromise because we don't often have a truck of lighting gear and a crew to set it up. So sometimes you just need to make the best of the situation at hand and be happy with what you get.</p>

<p>Sometimes you can alter your image in post but unless you have plenty of spare time I think it is better to get it right in camera. Just as an example I took Marc's image above (hope you don't mind Marc) and altered the exposure and color temperature to make it less "flashy" looking. Remember that if the image was shot without flash the subject would have been much more underexposed.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>Not bad, but a bit dull and lifeless ... this would print muddy on my printer. Perhaps differences in monitor calibration?</p>

<p>Why not post one of your own examples Pete?</p>

<p>Yes Pete, pretty much exactly, now you too will need the liquor store. Your third paragraph talks about the "quality" of the light, in other words, smooth, textured, jagged, hard etc. Your 3) talks about open shade, this is where on a big flash like I might use a "bare-bulb" is very directionless and has lots of spill, so it's not too obvious if not overdone, but open shade fill is probably the easiest. With a shoe flash a bounce card or other soft device works good. Now what I was going to mention before but was afraid to go off the deep end is that when you have a common combination of a cooler flash at say 5500K and a backround in the 6000K range somewhere, you can bring the whole thing up to about 6200K before the white dress starts to show warm because remember it was already cool, and the background will just go warmer and look nice anyway. This way the whole thing is in the "warm" family. Going the other way is not as pleasant I'm afraid, but in the snow, it might play out nice. Again, this is all anal stuff, not very practical in the field, but it does explore further the issues at hand for further analysis. Edit: I'm commenting on what you wrote, not on the remix print, we're cross sending here, I'm not speaking on picture edit.</p>

<p>I bow to William W.'s superior analysis of the problem. However, I still do think that reducing the fill flash level in relation to the sunlit parts will help mitigate the cut out look (even though the actual image was initially overexposed). In fact, I find this thread really interesting and am learning from it.</p>

<p>Below is a list of the various reasons suggested by everyone. No wonder it is hard to pinpoint the look, since every image may not have all the elements. The overriding reason is an unnatural combination which clues the brain that the scene is somehow 'wrong'.</p>

<p>1. Too much frontal light. Solution--reduce strength, don't overfill. Keep ratio of fill to sunlight (or key light) discernable, keep a ratio. Don't try to obliterate shadows. Use directional light to create roundness.</p>

<p>2. Backgrounds that are too prominent, either in value, lack of depth or texture/color. Solution--lighten backgrounds (looks more natural to the eye), change background to one with easy to see depth, use focus control to create the illusion of depth, add objects to show depth, break up monotonous or single toned/textured areas of the background.</p>

<p>3. Opposing or incongruent direction of light/shadows. Try to match direction of shadows and added light to existing light. Try to match color of added light to existing light.</p>

<p>4. If more than one subject, group appears too 'flattened' in perspective. Solution--break up subjects to show depth within group.</p>

<p>I'm sure I'm missing some. Please add, if I've missed something.</p>

<p>With regard to the exposure in Vail's camera, allowing the camera to operate at ISO 400 here and dance up to f18 is tough stuff for a regular flash to handle. Having the ISO at 200 and manually controlling the shutter to 1/250 would have gotten the whole thing down to around f8 and 1/2, much better as flash is not blowing out full. Overall I don't think the exposure is really that hot because the steeple is already half in shadow and the shadows off the people are already elongated some and shadows are somewhat softened, so to my eye I think maybe exposure is about right to 1/2 stop over. So a mild descent from William in his excellent, thorough as usual, analysis suggests 1 to 1and1/2, I think less. Now, Vail also explained that this was a quick snap, and here we are going over this like the cover for SI lol, so I'm just looking at this as an oportunity to discuss fill and the lighting issue at hand, not to formulate any critique per se toward Vail. SO all this being said, I think I would have just lightly filled this, probably more as Nadine suggests and let the back-side light on the hair and such provide an accent. Fun thread folks. </p>

<p>Of course, I couldn't resist the chance to tweak Marc's already very nice shot. I'm not sure my version really speaks to the "cardboard cutout" phenomena, but I wanted to play with various aspects of the image to see which were important. As you can see, the major things that I changed were: (a) brought out more shadows & texture in the dress and the vail; (b) made the dress closer to pure white; © toned down the very bright yellow-green areas in the background (especially directly behind the B's face) that always tended to lead my eye away from the B; (d) darkened the grass at the very bottom of the image to help lead the viewer's eye upwards; and, (e) tried to add some shadows to the B's torso and face to enhance the 3D effect. Pls. ignore her LH shoulder. My pen slipped and I was too lazy to go back and fix the problem.</p>

<p>Which tweaks helped and which didn't? Too much overall post processing so it now looks fake for a different reason than the "cardboard cutout" effect? For that matter, did these tweaks do anything at all to reduce the "cardboard cutout" effect?, etc.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>I appologize, I said something unclear in my 9:48 post which really wasn't what I intended and I need to straighten it out so as not to cause confusion. I mentioned a cool flash of around 5500K, and a background of 6000K. What I should have said was a background (warmer) such as around 5000K not the 6000K which is cooler, but I was thinking in terms of PS settings. The 6200K would be the PS setting threshold which may start to show the dress as warmed up a bit. Sorry if I caused any added brain stress.</p>

<p>Sorry, just butting in because the topic is really useful to some of what I do. I do, think M. Williams and the above tweaks still look like cut outs. (not that its bad) Another approach that I tried out because the background was just to light and threw the subject into darkness is to let the sun hit more from the side, and then fill flash on the shadow side. You have to meter both sides, you can get reasonable "natural" look that way. I don't know if this helps. The fill light is coming in right side of the camera fairly square to the way her body is facing. I know it's off axis, but it seemed to work. Second one the light is the same place and she moved a bit. This is taking the light off the camera, but I"ve tried what other's have suggested for on camera flash and dialing down the flash or actually dialing down the flash EV depending on distance starting about 1.3 - 1.7 . This is off camera here. Example: <img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4031/4655024922_ef8e3ef1c4_z.jpg" alt="" /> <img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1279/4662213877_7448e9d3c0_z.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Here's a cheap and convenient accessory intended mostly for macros but also works nicely for fill with portraits *at short distances*: lens-mounted collapsible diffuser. Makes flash a bit less directional and softens the edges of the shadows. Available on ebay etc around $10. Does not fit on thicker lenses (then you may try a less convenient small softbox that mounts on the flash or a large bounce-card). Works with pop-up or external flash on camera. Mind that Nikon's TTL-BL does not compensate for the diffuser light loss but plain TTL does.<br>

<a href="http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1025&message=35870560">http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1025&message=35870560</a> </p>

<p><em>Berry, well done, but I would find that a little to harsh for wedding photography. </em></p>

<p>To follow up on Nadine's summation ... I also am learning, or relearning from this thread. However, I see it from a bigger picture point-of-view regarding expected prearranged shots:</p>

<p><strong>1) Don't shoot in bad light.</strong> Work with clients to avoid it. When they ask, tell them no and exactly why they'll hate it and<em> then</em> have to live with it for the rest of their lives. IMO, that was the number one error with the OPs shot in question ... not the cut-out issue. </p>

<p><strong>2) You can make anything work if given enough time</strong> ... commercial photographers do it all the time. Wedding photographers <em>don't have that time</em> or three lighting grips working the shot out of a Grip-Gear truck. </p>

<p><strong>3) It is very hard to overcome nature when it is working against you</strong> (including changing second-to-second). Unless you have the time, it will look unnatural in some way or another. There are always exceptions to this, but in general bad light is difficult to fix artificially ... at the shoot, or in post. </p>

<p><strong>Summation: </strong></p>

<p><strong>Quality and direction of light is the paramount quest, That is the basic lesson to be focused on IMO. Make nature your friend, not an enemy to overcome.</strong></p>

<p>Still not the optimal time of day, but spent time finding better light ...</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>Marc, I like the last two pictures very much.</p>

<p>I think the best course of action for outdoor formals at weddings is to start with the best possible location, background, and light that is available, and then adjust that with flash as needed, by making hopefully only subtle changes.</p>

<p>Marc, that last one is indeed soooo nice. My final thought on this is that all is well so long as we don't start making everyone look like Colorforms (remember those). 8-))</p>

 

<p>Just noticed this silverly feeling highlight on the cheeks of the subject in the last picture. Is there any way to avoid it? I see it in my own pictures shot with white umbrella fill light. I guess a gigantic softbox would do it, but something that is practical outdoors?</p>

<p>Marc I concur with the words in your last post.<br>

Jesse</p>

<p><strong><em>"In fact, I find this thread really interesting and am learning from it."</em></strong></p>

<p>Me too and further, I too am interested in pursuing Vail's images and finding the cause . . .<br>

Vail:</p>

<p>What Flash unit?<br>

Assume Camera mounted?<br>

In what City was this shot?</p>

<p>Thanks,</p>

<p>WW</p>

 

<p>Here I have printed and mounted on foam core full size "cardboard cutouts" of folks that could not be at events. The folks are overseas in the military; etc.</p>

<p>It maybe weird; but sometimes these same cutouts are in the group images ; and then the "cardboard cutout look" helps.</p>

<p>Normally these full size cutouts are for gag usage; High School reunions to formal stuff.</p>

<p>If the cuttout's image is laminated; one has an issue with reflections; same goes it is on gloss paper.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>marc, with your flash fill shots, are you having to switch your flash unit to high speed sync or are you shooting at the sync speed of the camera? just curious because your narrow DOF would require a high shutter speed outdoors, usually much higher than the sync speed. i just ran into this "f2.8 on sunny days" issue last weekend shooting some photos at the beach.</p>

<p>Marc will answer, but if you look at the exif on his fill flash shots, you'll see that they were shot with a medium format digital camera, and if you look at Marc's input on the medium format digital camera thread, you'll see that with his MF digital, he can shoot at 1/800th shutter speed with non HSS flash. That is 1 2/3 stops faster than your typical DSLR highest non HSS sync speed of 1/250th, meaning one can open up 1 2/3 stops on the aperture--more if you overexpose bright sunlit backgrounds.</p>

<p>You can do some searches on using ND filters for aperture control on bright, sunny days. There has been a number of previous threads. HSS will only get you so far, since flash power is diminished when in HSS mode.</p>

<p>Barry, looking at your examples, I think you may have illustrated one of the suggestions well. I think there is enough fill on your subject, yet not too much to flatten her out, and she certainly doesn't look like a cut out. Thanks for the illustrations.</p>

<p>Nadine is correct. Depending on the ambient, you can lower the ISO, increase the shutter speed (in the case of wider aperture for a narrow DOF, a higher sync speed camera helps) ... plus I carry a couple of ND filters and a Polarizer to further open the aperture. Also, lenses for a MF camera exhibit a narrower DOF compared to 35mm lens. A 100/2.2 MF lens has a very narrow DOF.</p>

<p>To get a narrow DOF with flash outdoors when using a 35mm with a 1/200th or 125th full sync speed in really bright conditions, I'd say the simplest solution is a ND filter.</p>

<p>While HSS does diminish flash output, it probably would be good enough at a closer distance like the shot above ... but for a group shot at a greater distance, it may be an issue. </p>

<p>I will be picking up an ND filter tomorrow...thanks!</p>