Fill flash question

[breakdown]

I was at the beach the other day, taking some pictures of my friends against a very bright sky with high, scattered clouds. Without the flash, the pictures probably would have been silhouettes. I was trying to use my flash to properly expose my friends while keeping the brilliant sky.

I was shooting in Av mode, Av of 5.6, I had the flash set to +2/3 EV (this is just my standard and in hindsight I probably shouldn't have done that). When I shot the pictures, my friends were exposed perfectly but the sky was blown out. What can I do next time to prevent this?

I really should just get used to shooting in M mode all the time and just exposing the sky correctly then use flash to fill the faces. It's just nice to be able to shoot in Av mode and not have to worry about setting the correct shutter.

Thanks

[E-K]

Manual probably would have been easier in this case. Like you said, expose for the sky, do a FEL on your subject and you're done. In this case using Av would mean worrying about adjusting the exposure compensation.

e-k

[Curtis N]

my friends were exposed perfectly but the sky was blown out.The flash limited the shutter speed to 1/200, much too slow for f/5.6 in bright sun. A blowout is the inevitable result.

Next time, try Tv mode at 1/200 and let the camera pick the aperture, or enable high speed sync on the flash.

Pay attention to the distance scale on the flash unit, since small apertures will limit your range, and HSS will reduce it even more.

[breakdown]

Oh, forgot to mention, the flash was on high speed sync.

[Curtis N]

It might help if we could see an image with EXIF info.
The metering mode (CW Average, Evaluative or Partial) and the percentage of the frame filled by the subject will also affect the exposure in that situation.

[breakdown]

Here we go:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y256/twoisgreaterthanfour/example2.jpg

Av: 5.6
Tv: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Focal: 35mm

I shot this in RAW. Before I resized and uploaded, I just unchecked all the boxes so it was direct from the camera. I can improve the image a lot by lowering the brightness and exposure but this adds a lot of noise. Out of camera, the background was way over-exposed.

[Curtis N]

What metering mode (CW Average, Evaluative or Partial)?

[breakdown]

Oh, I used Evaluative metering. The box with the dot in the middle.

[Curtis N]

Normally I would not expect Evaluative metering to overexpose that much, but your subject's black jacket probably threw it off. The camera does a lot of thinking to try to identify the subject and expose it correctly. CW Average metering might have gotten closer to what you wanted.

If you want to expose the background a certain way, usually it's best to meter the background, then recompose and take the shot.

[breakdown]

Thanks Curtis.

I guess I'll just start shooting in manual mode in those situations with tricky lighting. I guess checking the histogram more frequently would have at least notified me that quite a few of my shots were blown out in parts.