help with tough lighting

I was asked to shoot my neice's portrait this morning. Inside shot was not an option. Outside, morning sun, no clouds in the sky - the sun was bright. I decided to turn her back to the sun and use it to highlight her hair and positioned my SB600 wirelessly to my left at 45 degree angle for fill and had on camera flash from D200 also contribute some since the light from the sun was so bright. I'm very happy with the exposure overall - colors look good and good skin tone, but some of her hair got completely blown out. How could I have fixed this...or could I?

Here's the photo -



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Matt Mc

I would have used a shutter speed much faster than 1/80th to tone down the sky. Try that with fill flash next time.

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Matt Mc

You might want to get an exposure value on grass and use flash balance(-1/3 or-2/3) for overall exposure in the frame.

Or get an EV for the burnt hightliight area next time and add 1.3 to 2.0 compensation. also use flash for fill. You'll get a nice hair line.

p.s. never use too much flash fill-in.
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Sandy

since your shutter speed is only 1/80 second was to have further limited the ambient exposure by using a shorter shutter duration. Moreover, given your close range, I suspect you could have used the high-speed sync capabilities of the SB600 and set a combination of ambient and flash exposure to allows you to keep detail in both the sky as well as your subject. As it is, the bald white sky and burnouts on her shirt and jacket, as well as the hair, are very distracting. Personally, in a situation like this, I don't mind a moderate amount of underexposure of the subject as it seems natural in an obviously backlit situation.

Here's a shot I made under very similar conditions (1/320 @ f/8, ISO 100, 17mm and -1.33 flash exposure compensation with a lumiquest diffuser) that take's advantage high speed flash sync to keep sky detail in a backlit situation.



With strobes outdoors (more powerful monolights or packs and heads), I've used ND filters and/or polarizers to reduce the ambient exposure because in that situation one can't use a higher sync speed without underexposing part of the frame.

Hope it helps.

Matt Mc said:

I was asked to shoot my neice's portrait this morning. Inside shot
was not an option. Outside, morning sun, no clouds in the sky - the
sun was bright. I decided to turn her back to the sun and use it to
highlight her hair and positioned my SB600 wirelessly to my left at
45 degree angle for fill and had on camera flash from D200 also
contribute some since the light from the sun was so bright. I'm
very happy with the exposure overall - colors look good and good
skin tone, but some of her hair got completely blown out. How could
I have fixed this...or could I?

Here's the photo -



--
Matt Mc

Click to expand...

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Kabe Luna

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kabeluna/

Another option is to use the bracketing feature. Set up with a tripod. figure out what the exposure diference is between the background and the subject. Then adjust the bracketing parameters to match. Take three exposures in rapid sequence. Then layer them in photoshop...do a layer mask. A little fill flash would still be nice in this scenario too, but it wouldn't have to be so bright as to destroy the scene.

best wishes
Scott

She's a cutie! A simple solution is to shoot entirely in the shade with fill flash, or shoot so that you keep the sky out of the background.
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JohnE
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