Today I was doing some more experimenting with Fill Flash. This time I was trying different FEC settings at different distances from my subject. Basically I was shooting from about 5, 10, 15 and 20 feet away, and using the normal fill flash setting, the -1 setting, the -3 setting and the +1 setting.
I wasn't sure if 20 feet would be too far, but it did seem to work pretty good at lighting up the shadows.
Even though I was only taking quick practice shots, I did get one shot that I thought turned out pretty good.
This is a shot I took of my daughter from about 10 feet away, using the Fill flash at +1 exposure:
I also took the same shot at different exposure settings, but this one seemed to come out the best. I still have a long way to go before I begin feeling comfortable knowing when to use the best fill flash settings, but I am starting to at least understand it better.
That's a really nice photo. I'm glad to hear that your fill flash experiments are working out.
While you're testing the different FEC settings, I see that you're skipping over "FEC 0". I wonder if you should also take a photo with a flash setting of FEC 0 to establish a baseline of what it looks like. From there, you can compare what FEC -1 and FEC +1 look like, compared to FEC 0. Also, take a photo with no flash to establish another baseline. Just a thought.
With the above photo, looks like a lot of the leaves are close to being "blown out". In other words, the highlights are way too bright. I see that you're shooting in "shutter priority (Tv)". I wonder if you should try decreasing your exposure compensation to about -1. That would decrease the background exposure by 1 stop, and hopefully avoid the blown highlights. Since your subject is so close to the background, the flash should help to brighten much of the background, too.
One other thought about your fill flash experiments. You've been taking photos of darker-toned backgrounds. Plus, your background wall was already dark because of the shadow. And in this case, your daughter is wearing a mostly-black T-shirt. Because of this, I'm not sure that your fill flash answers are applicable to other situations. In this case, you were right to try out different FEC settings (or, you could have also done
flash exposure bracketing).
As you continue doing more FEC tests, I would try to find a background that has more midtones (ie. not mostly white and not mostly dark tones). See if your subject can wear something that's also more midtoned, too. (wait 'til you see her in a white wedding gown...then you'll *really* need to crank up that FEC!
)
The point of fill flash is to brighten a darker subject that's standing in front of a brighter background. I'm not sure this was the situation in your photo. So you have to have a brighter background, and a subject that's darker (for example, either in the shade or bright sunlight casting a harsh shadow on your subject's face). Set the camera to give the proper exposure for the background. Then set your flash to about FEC -1 to help "lift" the shadows from your darker subject. Adjust the FEC as necessary, or use flash exposure bracketing.
Now that I think about it, I think your flash was trying to light the entire scene, since both the background and your subject were darker.
Anyway, see if that helps, and see what others have to say. Great job on your flash photos.
