Twilight Balance

The idea of this exercise from Strobist is to practice controlling the ambient versus flash component of an image. Twilight or dawn are the best times to do this as you do not require huge flash power to achieve a result in the face of strong sunlight. The potential backgrounds available can also be more interesting with sunset or sunrise colours. There are plenty of people out there who still advise the use of a meter to achieve the sought after balance between flash and ambient. I currently like the cheaper iterative approach made available by digital cameras and their LCD screens.

So, this is the process I use. Set the camera to manual mode, shutter speed at the maximum sync speed, 1/200th in my case. Estimate an aperture, maybe f5.6, I'm normally starting with ISO200 too. Take a shot of the proposed background, chimp the result and it's histogram. Adjust the aperture if required and chimp again. Persuade my ever willing six year old that it won't take that long really darling (chocolate works well here!). Set my SB800 to remote, dial in manual flash at say 1/8th power in my camera menu. Take a shot. Chimp it. Adjust flash power if necessary. OK, the background will be getting darker so either enjoy this change or slow the shutter to compensate. This will not affect flash exposure. If it is necessary to open the aperture by a stop then the flash power will need to be reduced by a stop too. So far I have only been trying to do this in the garden. The next step is to jump in the car and go up the hill a bit for a better backdrop, we're lucky to be in sight of the New Zealand alps. That may incur a higher chocolate cost for the model.