How to identify when to use reflector/fill in

[danielyamseng]

When I capture the shoot, the face of the subject doesn't look dark but to my surprise, it's head was darker than the background and the body of the subject.

These happen in brightly lit outdoor situation i.e the beach as well as in door shoot.

For outdoor I have purposely shoot where the sun is at my back( or in other word the sun lit directly to the subject).

I have tried to use a light meter for both condition(meter the light fall to the subject) but still doesn't eliminate the problem.

What is this happening?

[neilwood32]

Your question would be easier to answer with pictures (preferably with exif intact).

Im not quite grasping what you are getting at.

[danielyamseng]

Neilwood, let say I shoot a model in outdoor. The lighting over there is quite balance and not too bright.

Before I take a snap, I didn't see the model face is dark or at least darker than the rest of the body. But the shoots result a shadow on the model face.

Using a flash to fill in, no matter how I manually set the power or bounce it with bounce card or a bounce diffuser, would either get a bright face or unnatural looks.

Sometimes using a reflector would overexpose the shoulder though showed right on the face.

Ask for an indoor shoot, I saw the lighting is quite uniform but a shoot w/o flash taken showed a strong shadow on the face.

Would it be this depend on experience than judgement by the naked eye?

Lastly when do you guys choose to use a fill in flash over a reflector?

[RandyMN]

I would say that reflectors will always look more natural than flash if that's what you are worried about.

Whether reflector or flash is used, it sounds to me as though your main problem is balancing the shadows on the subject with the rest of the photo.

You stated that you used a light meter, but how was your flash set? If you are relying on auto exposure for the flash then this may be why you are having trouble controlling the shadow (fill) lighting. You also did not state if your light meter is incident or reflective, or whether it has flash reading capability.

My suggestion would be to use that light meter, incident or reflective, and try pointing the incident globe it at each light source, or the reflective reading at each surface to see the differences bewteen the brightness. After you are more aware of the lighting ratio you are working with, you can then make adjustments to modify and get what it is you are looking for.

This can be done using a reflector or a fill flash.

[Zapins]

I think I ran into a similar problem while shooting hot air balloons and people posing in front of them at dawn before the sun came up fully. I found that playing around with the F stop and the speed of the picture 1/300 and F9 with flash tended to expose dark close-up subjects correctly as well as far away subjects like the hot air balloons (exposed correctly by the sun).

Unfortunately, in my situation the lighting conditions changed every few minutes as the sun rose, so I constantly had to recalibrate :(

[danielyamseng]

RandyMN, I'm using an incident metering and the flash set to Manual mode. Yeah you're right I'm having difficulty on the shadow part and kind of hard to get the right reading by looking at the histogram.

[RandyMN]

RandyMN, I'm using an incident metering and the flash set to Manual mode. Yeah you're right I'm having difficulty on the shadow part and kind of hard to get the right reading by looking at the histogram.

Does the flash adjust power levels?

[DC Fan]

When the subject is backlit, it's time for a reflector or fill flash. With experience, you'll learn to recognize the situations where there's more light coming from behind the subject than from the front.

[fadetoblack22]

Lastly when do you guys choose to use a fill in flash over a reflector?

I would use a flash when there is no light to reflect. i.e a cloudy day, or if you are exposing for a bright background and need to fill the subject.