External flash - a powerful ally in the dark

How to make your family brighter - use an external flash.

Sunny days present a problem when trying to fill dark spaces with flash.  Brightly lit backgrounds with large EV values will demand either small apertures or high shutter speeds, or some combination of both.  If you expose for the shaded areas, you will blow out the background.  Built-in flashes can mitigate shadows a little bit, but unless you are very close to your subject, they just don't have enough power.  The best solution is a powerful external flash.

Following the sunny-16 rule, the above photo (shot with slide, I don't have the exif) an ISO of 100 at 1/100th of a second would require an aperture of f/16.  Built-in flashes are only good up to about 2.5 feet at these settings; by 5 feet, the flash is two stops underpowered.  I was probably 10 feet away at the time; the built-in unit would have made no difference (other than catchlights in the eyes).  Even if the shutter speed was increased to 1/200th and the aperture reduced to f/11, the situation would still be grim.

This is where an external flash would be handy.  A decent flash (guide number 100 in feet) could easily fill the shadows, especially shooting at f/11 - where a 10 foot difference is manageable.  It also allows sun-lit areas to become inconsequential - notice the bright spot on my wife's head - it is not visible in the second photo.

There are those who would argue that an HDR photo would provide decent results without flash.  The great problem here is the wriggling children, where HDR may produce ghosts.  With the right software, you can mitigate ghosting, but it all still provides a lot more work, and the end results wouldn't be as good.

Of course, you can also play with masks, especially with a raw image, in a program like Photoshop.  Such tools and the dynamic range of a good raw file can allow you to compensate for the shadows, assuming that you exposed for the background.  Trying to salvage the background in a shot like this, if the subjects were properly exposed, would be difficult, as digital media has more latitude in the shadows than highlights do in brighter areas.  Then, too, are the sunny spots on the people; they would be almost impossible to correct without a lot of attention.

A modern camera with a global shutter will allow a flash to fire at high shutter speeds.  This allows lower apertures and will give built-in flashes the opportunity to do the job.  Of course, only high-end cameras sport such shutters, and they don't generally include a built-in flash.  Either way, an external flash unit is the best choice.

Thanks for reading.     

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com


 

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