This was from an editorial assignment in Austin, TX. The idea was to get a shot of Root Design Company’s partners on location in front of one of their projects. The challenge was to make it all work under some very intense Texas sunlight. Flash for fill light was a given. I’d be using a flash unit on a stand (Canon Speedlite 580EX II), with shoot-thru umbrella, triggered by PocketWizards.
For this shot, it only made sense to get the hilltop view with the pool they had designed in the foreground . I used my Canon EF 17-40mm f4L USM for the wide angle I needed to capture the scene. Since I was using manual flash my shutter speed would be locked in at no faster than 1/250 sec.
The ambient called for f/11 at ISO 200, which would also give me an appropriate depth of field for this shot. The small aperture meant I’d have to use a lot of flash power (1/2 – 1/1 power setting).
If you look closely, you can see that I didn’t place my light all the way over to the shadow side opposite the sun angle. The reason for this is I wanted the light to fall in a more natural direction to place the shadows where you might expect to see them. It’s not a completely natural light look, but it’s way better than what the real light was doing out there.
Why ISO 200? It’s all a balancing act, and sometimes it’s not about the best possible decision, but about the best one you can think of quickly to just make it work. Still, the choice made sense. Shutter speed was not going to move. So, going to ISO 100 would have me at f/8 (less DOF, flash settings would remain the same). Going to ISO 400 would have me at f/16 (unnecessary extra noise and DOF, no change in flash settings).
There was no upside to doing anything different that I could see at the time. Over-thinking a shot while you’re trying to keep your subjects with you is not a good idea. Sometimes the best thing you can do is rely on your standard settings for a given situation, and just make a slight adjustment if you have to. The “right” settings are the ones that do the job.
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Hi Ed
I stumbled upon your site today and I am enjoying reading up using flash in outdoor full sun. I recently shot a bride+groom with a vintage car at noon and was very frustrated trying to balance flash for fill manually. Usually I would control the time of day I was shooting to avoid such a challenging situation! Not a choice in this case, and I really wanted that vintage car shot.
When I approached the shoot, I assumed using high speed flash sync (Canon Speedlite 580EX II) was the answer – because I thought I needed a much higher shutter speed than 200-250. This article makes me see this all in a different light (ha!).
I am curious though – why do you say “Since I was using manual flash my shutter speed would be locked in at no faster than 1/250 sec.” Could you not have used the high speed flash option on the flash unit?
What am I missing here? – feelin’ like a newbie
@Kim: That is actually an excellent question. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
The reason your question is great is because (at least on my Canon 580EX II) the fact that you can press the high-speed sync button and get that mode to display in the flash’s LCD screen, even in the flash’s manual mode, can be misleading. The mode is “on” but if you’re not shooting with something capable of communicating the E-TTL signals it won’t actually provide a high-speed sync solution.