Dumb question

[silverturtle]

im gonna ask a question, that im almost positive that i know the answer to, but i just want to make sure im not missing something.

im reading and learning alot about off camera flash. and when ever there is something said about it there is always the line "Expose your picture to the background, then take your shot"

what exactly does it mean to "expose your picture"

[The Moose]

If you're shooting flash, you want to expose your foreground with the flash. So then what do you do with the background, or ambient? Expose for it. This means you'll get an even exposure throughout the photo :)

[tonylong]

To get a "well balanced" flash shot, whether off-camera or on-camera, it is generally helpful to let in enough "ambient light" to give your shot some background and surrounding, as opposed to a "flash snapshot" look where your subject is brightly lit but everything else is either dark or just getting a bit of illumination from the flash and looks obviously "fake".

To accomplish this, you want to set your aperture and shutter speed to let enough light in as possible, without trashing things you need like depth of field and movement considerations, even though the brief flash will "freeze" a moment. Set your ISO high enough to make these things bright enough, then the flash will brighten the foreground/subject to make it stand out.

These things take practice, and each scene will require some adjustments. One adjustment to pay attention to is Flash Exposure Compensation -- left at the default, it's easy to get the subject over-blown, so check your preview -- this is a situation where the LCD preview has value because it can show you if your flash exposure out-does your background exposure.

Hope this helps a bit!

[sapearl]

Hi Tony - I can't really add anything to your well crafted answer. But I just wanted to say your response here is one of the more readable and helpful general overviews of what we all try to do do when using this technique. Geekspeak has it's place, but simple, direct English can often make a quicker point. - Stu

[tonylong]

Hey, Stu, whoopee!

[silverturtle]

Thank you for the insightfull answer, I think I worded it wrong. What I was getting at is to get the exposure right in the background , is the way to do it just to shoot a test **** and adjust setting from there? Or is there an exposure function on a camera

[sapearl]

You can actually do it both ways Silver - trial and error/experience vs. metering. And that's what's nice about that little LCD at times.:D As time goes on, one method may be faster than another for you.

You could use the camera's meter to measure how much ambient background light is present, and then set the shutter speed/aperture accordingly. Then with the flash on Auto-ETTL fire away. The flash will automatically expose for the foreground.

Usually I will run the camera in Manual mode, which locks in the shutter and aperture that I determined was best for the situation. Having determined what I want, the aperture and shutter won't be variables that could change if I point the camera in a different direction. But the flash itself will automatically determine what is best to fill in the foreground........ most of the time. If it does not, then you play around a bit with FEC+ or FEC-.