Question about full flash

I was shooting an outdoors wedding on a bright day with a 30D and a 580EX. I was trying to add fill flash, but the problem I was running into was that I couldn't keep the shutter speed below 1/250 so the flash wouldn't work. I went all the way up to f22 and couldn't get the shutter speed 250 or below.. The flash was in ETTL and I was shooting in manual at 100 iso. How do I use fill flash outdoors in bright sunlight??

You could diffuse it, or put a neutral density gell on it to cut the output down?

If you put the flash in high-speed sync mode you can shoot at faster than 1/250. Have you checked out the stickies in the flash forum?

The problem is the flash will not fire if the shutter speed is over 1/250. There was enough natural light that I couldn't get the shutter speed below that, even by taking the aperture to f22 (which was not acceptable either)... I had too much light, I ended up not using fill and have to deal with shadows under the eyes... Not bad, just a little extra time post processing... I would like to figure out how the pros use fill in bright outdoor lighting.

Even with high-speed sync enabled?

are you in aperture/tv priority? fp on the 580 will allow any speed

there is a button that has an "H" with a flash symbol next to it. that's high-speed sync for the flash. press it so that the symbol appears on the flash LCD. your problem should be solved from there.

I was in full manual mode, I didn't know that it would fire at a higher shutter speed in av or tv priority mode... aaarghhh, I am an idiot... I never tried high speed sync, but you are saying that in manual mode I could use higher shutter speed with the flash for fill?
Too much to learn, luckily it didn't cause me too many problems in this situation. And even luckier that there a bunch of people smarter than me on this board !! I appreciate the help guys.

hi it wont fire at a higher speed in av/tv mode thats why we have the high speed sync..in av mode and manual it should use auto fill flash although you may need to alter the fec to get the fill light looking right

There's no such thing as "auto fill flash", at least with my way of understanding E-TTL 2. E-TTL 2 attempts to get a 'correct' flash exposure based either on evaluative or average reading (depending on the custom function on the camera - evaluative is default) of, apparently, the centre 17 metering zones. Unlike the original E-TTL, there's no link to the active focus point.

Many people find E-TTL tends to underexpose a bit. This means some positive FEC is often needed if you're lighting the picture wholly or mainly by flash - +1 is my starting point.

True fill flash needs negative FEC - typically -1 1/3 or -1 2/3.


High Speed Sync will work in any mode - including M mode.

David

This is exactly the circumstance that high speed flash was designed for (in reality, the only thing it's good for!).
Remember that the flash output is considerably reduced in this mode - it woul'dve probably been out of range for the distances you'd need for the full wedding group.

apologies for stating auto fill flash, i meant that when the camera is in av mode ,the flash will only 'fill in' the 'main subject' and not expose for the whole pic ie background that is left to the camera settings.hope this explains things better

I didn't try high speed sync, either that or using av mode would have solved the problem. In the heat of the moment, I just just couldn't think of the correct setting... Again thanks for all the input, it was all very helpful..