What is your routine with speedlight flash?

<p>Hi. <br>

I'm wondering if I should measure the light with my camera (on manual) before I turn on my speedlight, and then adjust the light. <br>

Or should I just turn on the speedlight and measure the light right away?<br>

Thank you.</p>

<p>That's going to depend, among other things, on the effect you want to create and your flash settings -- TTL or manual. Personally, I measure (with a meter) ambient light, set the camera to underexpose 1/2-1 stop, then meter the flash at the correct exposure. This gives me a bit more drama and separation between subject and background.</p>

<p>Thank you Peter. I will try that:-)</p>

 

<p>Sarah:</p>

<p>I recently wrote a general description of how I use my Nikon i-TTL on-camera flash system in another thread here:</p>

<p><a href="/wedding-photography-forum/00c3As?start=20">http://www.photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/00c3As?start=20</a></p>

<p>In a nutshell, I'll typically make an i-TTL test exposure with a subject, evaluate it on the LCD, and, if necessary, make on-the-fly adjustments using the flash compensation dial on my camera (this mostly applies to event coverage--for studio applications, everything is set to manual).</p>

<p>However, if you also want to expose for the background, that requires a slightly different technique. While my flash is still set to i-TTL mode, I'll typically set the camera in manual mode: First, I'll dial in my preferred shutter speed (the minimum required to freeze most motion, but not more than my flash's sync speed--typically 1/250th). Second, I'll select my preferred aperture (if shooting singles or small groups, generally around f/5.6). Lastly, I'll dial-up my ISO until I can expose for the ambient (background) light level (my flash then automatically adjusts its i-TTL output accordingly). Since I'm shooting with full-frame bodies, I have quite a bit of headroom with my ISO setting before the noise level becomes unacceptable. If I find that I still need more exposure for the ambient, I'll drop my shutter speed slightly (e.g., 1/160th), and/or open up my aperture slightly. If it's really dark, I'll switch to a faster prime, open up, and focus as precisely as possible, often hovering an active focus point over the subject's eye.</p>

<p>I'm not the be-all, end-all authority on this--these are just the techniques that I use.</p>

<p>I said:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>I recently wrote a general description of how I use my Nikon i-TTL on-camera flash system in another thread here:</em><br>

<em><a href="/wedding-photography-forum/00c3As?start=20" rel="nofollow">http://www.photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/00c3As?start=20</a></em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>For some reason, that link no longer points to the correct page (it's on the page preceding the one linked above, near the bottom):</p>

<p><a href="/wedding-photography-forum/00c3As?start=10">http://www.photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/00c3As?start=10</a></p>

<p> </p>