practicing with fill flash

Elaine

Today I took some shots of my son at the park and practiced using some on-camera fill flash. How do you think I did? Is it a reasonable balance?

dablan

Excellent use of a fill. Just enough without being noticed.

Scott_Quier

I'm with dablan on this. You did a wonderful job balancing the sunlight with the flash fill. If you look very hard you can see some signs, but, wow, this is very well done. I hope one day to do this well on a consistant basis.

Elaine

Thanks, dablan and Scott! It's good to hear that other eyes feel it's pretty good. (Considering the subject matter, I can be a bit biased!) I was so concerned with blowing it out, that I think I did underexpose and had to bring it up a bit in post.

Consistency...that's the tricky part! I feel like I'm still learning with every shot and working hard for the good ones and I'm not yet confident in my consistency. I told a friend recently that consistency (or lack there-of) is why I don't feel I can charge anything yet, for all my friends who want family pictures taken. I'm hoping that by shooting everyday for my self-portrait-a-day project that the consistency thing will begin to get ironed out!

Thanks for the comments!

Elaine

dablan

In fact, it almost looks as if you're using a reflector, rather than a flash.

Owen

I think it's still a bit underexposed -

Elaine

Owen wrote:

I think it's still a bit underexposed -

I've been wondering about this...but then I would think, well he is somewhat backlit and so that would mean a "natural" looking shot should be a bit darker on his face, shouldn't it...or ??? I really don't know. I guess it was a worthwhile practice session. Now I need to try it again!

Elaine

System

I like this elaine-

you could probably do a little pp for the underexposure?-

Scott_Quier

dablan wrote:

In fact, it almost looks as if you're using a reflector, rather than a flash.

except for the small catch-lights in the eyes, I completely agree.