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How to Use a Flash Outside

Lighting, Lighting, Photography, Production Jul 03 , Episode 328

Shooting for a Natural Look

How to use a Flash outside.

Today we went out to a preserve with Nina for a shoot!

Using strobes and ambient light with a good ratio will help create more contrast without looking artificially lit. Changing your shutter speed to let in more light will help your image look more interesting (than mostly ambient or mostly strobe-lit) while still maintaining the a style that looks completely natural.

We started off with a relatively slow shutter speed, 1/160, and an aperture of 3.2, so we needed to lower the ISO down to 50. You could also use a ND filter.

To let in more ambient light we’ll slow down the shutter speed even more. As we keep slowing down the shutter speed the images look better as there is more light in the background.

Flash Vs. Ambient

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Gear Used in This Episode

Canon 5d Mkii

Sekonic L-758DR

Avenger Stands

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Creepinowl

Just one question was the light at full power? I noticed that you never touched the power at the light source so i was wondering at what power the light was.
Ryan Weiss

Not that I am certain, but that looked like an Einstein and with the above mentioned ISO/aperture/shutter speed combo for the picture, there’s no way that thing was set anywhere near full power. Probably pretty low actually

-Ryan
http://www.RyanJWeiss.com
http://phlearn.com Aaron Nace

Totally, the flash was at about 1/32 power, very low. We are using an Einstien here with an 86″ Parabolic Reflector.
Philip Martin

Aaron,
I also see that you’re using the basic reflector in conjunction with the 86″ PLM.
Does that pare down the size of the source to make it more directional?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58947799@N05/ Ian Arneson

Great great episode, exactly what I needed for a shot I myself have coming up. Thanks Pham!
UFrank

as ever, informative episode. You said, that there is this limitation of the sync speed. That is no longer a problem, since more and more flash trigger could do the high speed sync, i.e phottix odin, pixel king.
I use them a lot in bright sunlight and fire my AB1600 with a 1/4000 of a second and an aperture of F2.0
http://phlearn.com Aaron Nace

Yeah, Philip, that was a result of poor packing, more than anything else. The reflector designed for use with the PLM is much better.
Adrian Britton

Great information as I’ve just purchased some wireless
triggers to start exploring off camera flash on location
Epiphany_media

Anything less than 1/125 without a tripod and you suffer camera shake/unsharp
Kristina

thank you!
LovelyLensPhotography

What light and battery pack was used? Thank you.
http://www.facebook.com/tom.simone Tom Simone

That’s not right.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58947799@N05/ Ian Arneson

How are you metering this type of situation considering you have ambient and flash which I assume the light meter can meter both.
Matt Findley

Guys, I would really like to contribute to this discussion. I received an AWESOME tip from photographer Doug Box regarding strobe/ambient balance. Doug said he tried for years to get it just right and he finally came up with a formula.

To acheive that “lit, but not lit” look, take an ambient….wait for it…. incident METER reading at the subject towards the camera. Let’s say the ambient is f5.6, now add your flash and what you’re looking for is a COMBINED ambient and strobe reading that is 2/3rds of a stop above the ambient reading alone. So, in the above example, your ambient only is 5.6 and your ambient and strobe together is 7.1.

I know, I know, you don’t use a meter, but this really does work well and takes a ton of the guess work out of it.

I must note that this is how to go about it using lighting conditions where the foreground and background share the same light. Think open shade that isn’t backlit.
http://jpetronephotography.carbonmade.com/ Jenna Petrone

We used an Einstein strobe with a 86″ Parabolic Reflector and a Vagabond battery pack .: )
Pettybryan

A good stance and camera hold technique can produce sharp images. Flash lit subjects helps too.
Zoinken

Lets say you have the aperature set and its lit as you wanted.. But you want more ambient.. so you slow down your shutter.. lets say.. as you did. From 1/125 to 1/40.. how low shutter can you go before the background gets blurry..
Because the subject is still frozen by the flash?

Where is the magic line?
http://www.gemwindowsanddoors.com.au/ gemwindowsanddoors

It’s good to see this information in your post, i was looking the same but there was not any proper resource.
http://twitter.com/KF_Photographer Karl Filip Karlsson

1/40 is really slow shutter. do you really got a sharp image? maybe need a tripod, or how can you get compensate that?