Struggling to get flash just right

I did these engagements the other day. I'm struggling with getting the balance between flash and ambient light. Does it just take practice. Can you tell from these pictures, what I'm missing? Do you need originals? Please let me know what you think.

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They all look overexposed, and pink. I had to have some fill, and I had the 580ex at -3 for some of these, I just couldn't seem to nail it.

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Could you give a bit more idea what you're trying to accomplish? I.e. what is it that you don't like about your flash shots?

Answering blindly, these don't look badly balanced in an exposure sense, but neither does it look like it's color balanced with the ambient (sun). It also looks to be on-camera, which IMO is usually not preferred for couples shots. If you've not already, try heading over to the strobist.blogspot.com site and read through Lighting 101. Might help master what you're going for.

What camera were you shooting with and what settings were you using ?

The first two, in particular, just look over-exposed all round and the levels histogram looks very flat and plain wrong. Something is not right somewhere and I suspect its more to do with the camera (settings) than the flash unit.

Well you see, that is precisely the problem. by settings, do you mean Av, & M because I was switching between the two, and I was in portrait mode. And Sean you are right that I used the in camera shade WB. but besides that, I get so flustered that sometimes I don't know what else I'm doing. I shoot with a 40D. And it is new, so I'm learning the 40D(up from a 350D) and the speedlight at the same time.

A few more questions ...

Were these shot in RAW (I hope)? The contrast is much higher than what I would like for images like these (ymmv) and the shadows look badly clipped on #1 and #3. As already mentioned #1 and #2 look like they were quite overexposed and you tried to recover them.

Can you post a link to the original files?

#'s 3 and 4 look much better (IMO) than #1 and #2... that assumes, of course, that the black clipping Bob_A noted is a deliberate result of processing and not because you weren't able to capture the details (incidentally, Bob_A, good catch on the recovered pixels in the first two). Was the darkening intentional?

Do you have any similar shots where you had the flash turned off? It'd be easier to tell what you could have done for balancing the exposure if we could see some comparison shots.

For now, to be honest, I'd focus on learning one system at a time - the 40D first, and the flash after you've got a better handle on that. FWIW, the 40D has a spot sensor for exposure. Find some decent natural light, pose your subjects, choose the spot meter, select the subjects' face(s), and take your picture. Not trying to be harsh, but if you're trying to learn to balance all of these things at once you need a good starting point from which to work.

Then add the flash back in. You started right (IMO, everyone does things differently) to use M. When you're using the on-camera flash, dial in a shutter / aperture that gives you the background the way you want it (exposure and focus-wise), then turn your flash on, meter off of your subject's face again, and take the shot. The advantage of on-camera flash being that it will meter perfectly for you every time. The downside will be that you will have to be quite creative to avoid that distinctive flatly-lit look. It can be done, but will take some work.

That's all just my opinion of course, and you've obviously demonstrated in other posts that you're quite capable of taking some very lovely pictures. I'd just go this route to get flash down.

Oh, and as for shots #1 and #2 for the client, reduce the ACR 'Recovery' and just convert them to black and white. Most people see blown-out pixels as 'high-key', and these should still come out splendidly. Post links to the large versions here if you run into trouble and I'm sure one of us can help you come up with something nice.

Sean