Fill in flash

[jani_k]

Hi all flash experts,

 

I'm shooting dog show in a river (retrievers fetch birdlookalikestoys from

water). Light comes from behind where I am (beach). The whole beach is in

shadow and river is fully sunny. Dog owner is standing on a beach (in shadow)

and the dog is in water (sunny). Today I shot pictures without flash and I'm

not very satisfied (Tried different exp.compencations etc.).

 

Tomorror I get a new shot at this so what would you succest, fill in flash? On

camera or external unit (canon 430ex with flash 30d body), and what settings?

 

Today I used iso400, f6,3.

[elaine marie]

Could you post an example of what you shot today?

 

Elaine

[jani_k]

Elaine,

 

Sorry, I would have posted example, but my usb memory stick broke and do not have empty cds to transfer photo from my other computer to this internet machine. And this pc do not have canon software installe;) computers....

 

Anyway, people and dogs on the beach look very dark and the river is ok. Even if I adjust exp.comp. (+1 stops or so). If I adjust it more of course the water get soooo overexposed.

[vivid_earth_photographics]

Maybe a polarizer would help with darkening the light reflecting off the river if you can angle yourself to get the sun to your right or left side? That might lower the contrast and allow for better exposure. Just an idea.

[Matt Laur]

Do you have access to a circular polarizing filter? That might cut down on a LOT of the glare coming off of the water, and allow you to better balance the exposure. Otherwise, you surely will need to squeeze a lot of power out of that flash to help fill, and it's possible that the color balance (between the daylight on the water and strobe's light on the nearby subjects) may seem a little unnatural.

 

Are you capturing this as competition shots, or do the owners simply want some shots along these lines? If so, can you shift some of the vanity shots to very early in the morning to get the light better?

[picturesque]

Unless you can stand no farther than about 12 feet from both owner and dog, fill flash won't help you much if the dog is in full sun. Most shoemount flashes aren't powerful enough to cover the distance at the f stop needed to balance to bright sun. Or you can set up off camera powerful flashes, but this would be completely impractical outside in a real event--maybe possible if you were shooting for the client for an ad or something and can control things.

 

I would avoid shooting both, and concentrate on one or the other, or in scenes where it is either mostly sun or mostly shade. Set the camera up with shutter priority at 1/250th, maybe manually zoom the flash head to a telephoto setting (since you are mostly photographing A dog or A person), which helps with the power issue. I've found if you use evaluative flash metering (custom function 14), and you minus compensate the ambient (not the flash) metering between 2/3 and 2 stops, the automatic fill flash reduction works well and the balance is good. For not so contrasty scenes try -2/3 stop ambient compensation, for more contrasty scenes, try more. I usually use +2/3 stop flash compensation as "normal" and find auto fill flash reduction works pretty well with that. High speed sync won't help you much unless you are pretty close to your subjects, which is why you use shutter priority, not aperture priority. Also--ISO 100, not 400.