Advanced Tips In Photography!

Fill In Flash

Our Advanced Tips In Photography can give you a better understanding when using fill in flash. If you find this too over-whelming there is a condensed version once you reach the bottom of the page.

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The main purpose of fill in flash is to provide enough fill light to complement the existing light exposure for the scene that you've chosen, indoors or outdoors.

As the name depicts, fill in flash should be just that, fill. It should not dominate illumination for the chosen image. It should provide just enough light to offset the shadow areas caused by not enough light striking the subjects face in comparison the surrounding light in the image. Because the background light is intended to be important in the image the main exposure is set to capture this existing tight look of the scene you’re shooting.

This is achieved by using a mode that is more suited for existing light such as program, aperture or shutter priority. These modes operate automatically and expose for the scene you’ve chosen and when combined with a dedicated automatic or TTL(Through The Lens) flash unit the resulting exposure will be the correct amount of fill in flash.

This sometimes doesn’t work properly because the sensor that guides the flashes exposure, which is different than the sensor that guides the cameras exposure can be confused because it sees too much flash being reflected from the subject causing the subject in the image to be too dark (set auto flash twice ASA), or because the sensor doesn’t see enough flash being reflected from the subject causing the subject to be too bright (1/4 the intensity of sun). Both of these situations can be overcome through the “flash exposure composition” settings controlled through the camera’s settings once the flash exposure value is determined to be too bright or too dark go to the “flash exposure composition dial” or FEC, (+/-) and change it to get the desired effect that you’re after. If your subject was too bright set the FEC to (-) values. You can set these in increments of 1/3 stop steps shown as 2+1+0-1-2 or 1/4 stops (example).

Start your adjustments small to see more dramatic change in the image. This is all based on the fact that your base exposure or background elements already look fine, if not the base or main exposure compensation may need to be adjusted (+/-).

If our advanced tips in photography fill flash is difficult for you to understand then you might want to check out our simplified version where you will find a few factors to keep in mind that can have a great effect on TTL fill in flash working properly. Our digital photography free tutorials on Photography Portrait Lighting will tell you more.

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