I'm no flash expert and was in the same boat getting overexposed faces with the flash. What I did was meter the background (underexpose a bit even) and set the flash (430ex ii in my case) to ETTL and just click. Looked good enough for me.
Here's a vid tutorial that helped me understand some of the concepts.
http://www.adorama.com …light-Portraits-AdoramaTV
HTH.
Booo on double posts too.

Oh okay will check it out!!


:p

