PM Question - Fill Flash with XTi

Scott_Quier

Hi -
I am a new photographer and recently while surfing dgrin, came across a beach wedding you did. I was wondering if you could answer a couple questions. I have a beach shoot tomorrow night and am soo nervous about the sun and shadows, etc. I'm praying for overcast however it's supposed to storm at 5PM so I might have to shoot right before that. Anyway, you said you used the histogram and made sure the exposure was way to the right. I have a Cannon XTi rebel. Am I correct in saying that you probably take a couple shots, analyze the histogram from those and then adjust manually?

For those that are interested, I suspect this is the referenced thread as it's the only recent wedding I've done on a beach.

I wouldn't worry about the sun too much - it's just another light source. As for the shadows, well shadows are your friend. Without shadows, all your photos will be very flat. What is difficult is controlling the light and shadows to get pleasing affects and that's where reflectors and/or fill flash have an impact.

Google is your friend:

Michael Reichmann has a good write-up on "Exposing to the Right" here

In addition the all the reasons mentioned by MR for shooting to the right, at a beach, you need to make sure you are shooting well to the right cause the camera is schtoooppid. The camera will try to turn all that beach to concrete gray when it is, in fact, quite a bit lighter than that. So, determine what your light level is. A light meter helps here, but you can use the Sunny-16 Rule almost as easily. Translate this exposure to your camera settings - shooting in manual mode really is much easier unless the light is changing quickly (like right as sunrise and sunset) and take a test shot. Where's your histogram? Do you have blinkies? Adjust your settings as appropriate.

I had some feedback saying to use fill flash, etc. but tonight when I used my flash, I had to take my ISO down to 100 and now looking at the pictures, my camera took the shutter speed down to 1/20. Yuck! I'm so confused. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Your wedding shots were amazing and the lighting was beautiful.

Fill flash - I'm going to assume you are using an on-camera flash (and not your pop-up flash). After you have set your camera to properly expose your background (see above, and see next paragraph if you shutter speed is faster than 1/250) the first step is ... turn on the flash (that was a poor attempt at humor - sorry). Anyway take a shot of your subject. How does it look. Too flashy? Turn down the power of your flash using FEC (look it up in your owner's manual). Not enough? FEC to the rescue - just turn it up a bit. Now, assuming your light isn't changing toooooo quickly, you should be set for the next 15 minutes or so.

If your selected shutter speed is faster than 1/250, you need to investigate High-Speed Shutter Synchronization and how to get your flash to work in this mode. One of the threads below talks a little about it.

Slow Shutter Speed - The fact that your shutter speed was adjusted to 1/20 implies that you were shooting in dark environs in Av mode. In this mode, the camera will use set the exposure assuming that ambient is your main light and your flash is for fill. With or without flash attached and turned on, the camera looks at the selected ISO and aperture, guesses what it needs for a shutter speed to get a "proper" exposure and there you are. In Av mode, you can adjust your settings using Expsoure Compensation, but that will only get you a maximum of 2 or 3 stops of compensation - and that may not be enough for your purposes. Just another reason why I try to shoot manual - 'cause the computer in the camera can be very stupid and stubborn.

A couple of threads you might want to check out (again, google is your friend):
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=64619
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=95537
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=37598
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=93467