 Melissa E. Downham |
Portraits outside Does anyone have advice on taking wedding pictures outside? I plan to shoot them in shade (at 4pm), but think that I may have to use flash for some of them. I use a Canon Elan 7 and a Canon 540 EX flash. How do I make sure there is a nice balance between the bride and groom and the background? I don't want the background to be too dark and overwhelmed by the flash.
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Jon Close |
550EX (newer version with E-TTL, FP high speed flash sync, etc) or the older 540EZ? Either way, the EOS camera and speedlight combination read the higher light levels for outdoor fill-flash and automatically adjust for a nice fill balance. The newer EX model with high speed sync will allow the use of higher shutter speeds and wider apertures than the EZ which will limit you to the 1/125 maximum traditional x-sync shutter speed. If you don't want the Canon algorithms to determine your exposure, you have complete freedom to set the balance yourself by shooting in Tv, Av, or M to set the background exposure and using either FEC or setting the output level of the speedlight manually to control the flash exposure. See: http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/ http://www.camera.canon.com.my/archive/photography/art/art13/index.htm
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Melissa E. Downham |
Thanks a lot. The articles you gave me helped quite a bit. One more question however. I do not know anything about Flash Exposure Compensation--how do you determine how much flash output you need when you set the flash manually. (In answer to your question, my flash is 550EX).
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Jon Close |
Without a flash meter, FEC is a judgement call. If with experience you find that in specific situations the flash's TTL program gives too much (or too little) flash for your tastes, then you'd dial in a guess at the compensation desired (+/- 1/2 for a subtle change, +/- 1 or more for more noticable difference). FEC (+/- 1/2, 1, ...) is different than the manual settings for the flash output (1/1, 1/2, 1/4, ...). FEC is applied to the automatic exposure set by the TTL metering. The manual output settings fix the flash output at full, 1/2, etc. and you control the flash exposure by setting the aperture using a flash meter or the guidenumber formula.
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