VE6AB Technical
Artificial Light
A lot of photographers shooting outdoor photos don't use a flash or add light to their images. You may be asking yourself why in the world would you want to add flash?
It’s all about filling in the shadows and balancing your ambient light with the exposure on your subject allowing for a much better photo to be shot.
One of my favorite carry's while out roving the grasslands with my bow, is my tiny Fuji X-70 seen in the photo that although it has a built in flash, the flash is basically useless beyond a meter or so.
My other Fuji camera the X-E3 does not have a built in flash, and after I acquired the X-E3, I shopped around for an external hot-shoe flash before settling on the Godox TT350F seen in the photo. Although the Godox TT350F is meant for Fuji cameras, it does not work with all of them, my X-70 being one of the models that it is not intended to work with.
A year or so ago through trial and error, I worked out the settings on the flash allowing it to work with the X-70 set in manual mode. For the most part, and because I only ever use the X-70 with its 28mm film equivalent lens for landscape photography as seen in my gallery "Trails Across the Prairies" however having as a rule something like prairie flowers, or my bow, or.....well you get it, I am always placing something in the foreground that benefits from fill-flash, with the camera set for ambient light exposures.
Some of the other situations as to why you would use fill flash is when your subject is backlit (the background light is brighter than the light on your subject’s face).
To lighten shadows and add detail to darker areas without overexposing highlights.
Fill in shadows caused by hats, other people’s heads or facial features.
Add catchlights to your subject’s eyes.
You want to expose your subjects properly but still keep some color and texture in the sky.
To add some separation from your background and subject.
I have been using fill-flash with my DSLR's for many years, owning several external flashes along with a remote trigger mounted on my camera allowing the remotely placed flashes to be controlled from the camera for perfect exposures.
Artificial light added to your ambient light photos is where its at, try it.
Expand the photo for a closer look.....
