Daylight fill flash

mercphoto

I'm fortunate enough to be able to land a commissioned session with the owner of a new Harley Sportster. Gorgeous bike. I'm planning a session about an hour before sunset at a nearby school. They have a scenic and unclutter backdrop of trees that I've used for a portrait session with the neighbors.

My question is I plan to use the pop-up flash unit on my dRebel to add glisten to the chrome pipes and forks. In doing so, what white balance should I use? Flash (even though most the light will come from the sun)? Or daylight (even though there will be some flash involved).

I do plan to shoot in RAW, but I'm also wanting to get it close in-camera, and I'm also just curiuos about the answer. I've also assumed I don't need the power of an EX flash unit.

Shay Stephens

mercphoto wrote:

I'm fortunate enough to be able to land a commissioned session with the owner of a new Harley Sportster. Gorgeous bike. I'm planning a session about an hour before sunset at a nearby school. They have a scenic and unclutter backdrop of trees that I've used for a portrait session with the neighbors.

My question is I plan to use the pop-up flash unit on my dRebel to add glisten to the chrome pipes and forks. In doing so, what white balance should I use? Flash (even though most the light will come from the sun)? Or daylight (even though there will be some flash involved).

I do plan to shoot in RAW, but I'm also wanting to get it close in-camera, and I'm also just curiuos about the answer. I've also assumed I don't need the power of an EX flash unit.

Flash output is typically tuned to produce the same color temperature as sunlight. So you can use auto WB, the sunny preset, the flash preset, or a custom WB if able.

DavidTO

I shoot in RAW, and had a situation recently where I wanted to use a fill flash in a sunset portrait. I left everything to auto, and processed the RAW file twice: once for daylight and once for flash. I then used layer masks to combine the two, using the flash to warm up the faces/bodies and daylight ot leave the white balance for the backgrounds, which weren't affected by the flash.

mercphoto

Flash on, flash off
So I tried some car pics tonight with the flash. Wanted to see if some advice I got on daylight car pics, to use the flash to fill in shadows, make chrome sparkle, etc. see if it is good advice. You can see them at: http://home.earthlink.net/~mercphoto/CarPics/CarPics.html

Two sets of pics. First was flash off, second was flash on. One set is 50mm, the other is 28mm. Canon Digital Rebel, 28-135 lens, circular polarizer. Flash was the pop-up unit. Time as 30 minutes before sunset. Aperture priority at f/22, fine JPG, daylight WB, tripod and remote shutter.

I don't like the flash pics. The camera cut the shutter in half (1 sec. versus 2 sec.) and it appears to be way too much a drop. Not sure why it went that far. So the results were not what I expected. What to do different?

Flash off:


Flash on:

wxwax

That's interesting. I'm trying to figure out why my camera (1D) is shooting flash pics super dark as well.

pathfinder

mercphoto wrote:

So I tried some car pics tonight with the flash. Wanted to see if some advice I got on daylight car pics, to use the flash to fill in shadows, make chrome sparkle, etc. see if it is good advice. You can see them at: http://home.earthlink.net/~mercphoto/CarPics/CarPics.html

Two sets of pics. First was flash off, second was flash on. One set is 50mm, the other is 28mm. Canon Digital Rebel, 28-135 lens, circular polarizer. Flash was the pop-up unit. Time as 30 minutes before sunset. Aperture priority at f/22, fine JPG, daylight WB, tripod and remote shutter.

I don't like the flash pics. The camera cut the shutter in half (1 sec. versus 2 sec.) and it appears to be way too much a drop. Not sure why it went that far. So the results were not what I expected. What to do different?

Flash off:


Flash on:

Hmmmm Interesting. You were using a Digital Rebel 300D. You were shooting in Av - aperature preferred. The manual for the 300D says shooting in Av, against a dark backgrounds, slow-synch shooting will be set so that the main subject is captured by the flash, and the background is captured by the long exposure using a long shutter speed. As you knew, this requires a tripod. I cannot find information in the manual about high speed flash with the built in unit on the 300D.

Have you tried using the Tv zone with a shutter speed of 1/125? You may need to up the ISO speed to allow an appropriate aperature for the 28-135mm. Or have you tried the Program zone also?

I would also remove the polarizer filter until you have the flash response dialed in first. I am not sure why the flash image is so dark.

An external EX series Flash (420 or 550) may offer much more light and more control over exposure than the built in unit but I am not sure if the 300D supports high speed flash synching. DrIT may know this information.

I assume you did not change your exposure compensation any?

mercphoto

Cars and flash

pathfinder wrote:

The manual for the 300D says shooting in Av, against a dark backgrounds, slow-synch shooting will be set so that the main subject is captured by the flash, and the background is captured by the long exposure using a long shutter speed. As you knew, this requires a tripod.

Correct on all counts. I do wonder if there was so much car that the camera could not recognize the "background", so could not expose it properly?

Have you tried using the Tv zone with a shutter speed of 1/125? You may need to up the ISO speed to allow an appropriate aperature for the 28-135mm. Or have you tried the Program zone also?

No, but good suggestions. Also good idea to remove polarizer until the exposure is figured out. The 300D should completely support either the 420 or 550 EX flash.

I assume you did not change your exposure compensation any?

Correct.