Shooting into the Sun/Bright backgrounds

[epp_b]

So you would be limited to that shutter speed (1/200 in our example). This might mean that your exposure for the sky might be 1/200 and F16.

Keep in mind that, if you're shooting people, you'll probably want to isolate them from the background. Shooting at f/16 is going to give you a huge depth of field, making for a distracting background and making it difficult to avoid nasty merges (pictures where it looks like a tree in the background is growing out of the subject's head, for example). You'll need to use neutral density filters instead when you want a wider aperture for a soft background with a sharp subject. These will darken the frame the same as a smaller aperture, but without affecting depth of field and causing diffraction.

 

[davebmck]

Dude, I see you have the sigma 10-20, by the way. Totally jealous!

Yep, nice sharp lens. I shot over 800 pics last June with it on vacation in AZ & UH. I was the perfect lens for that.

 

[MikeBcos]

In these situations, if my flash isn't powerful enough I use a slave unit on my hotshoe flash then either put it on a mini tripod closer to the subject or just get someone to hold it. That way when the camera's flash fires it triggers the closer unit and the ttl metering takes care of the exposure for me.

 

[PhotoJunkieJen]

So I thought I'd revive this topic with a slightly different twist.
Originally, I asked about properly exposing a background... and using fill in flash to illuminate people or other sort of foreground subjects.

What steps you would you take if you were shooting into the sun and wanted to illuminate, say, a large field or mountain... or some sort of scenery where I flash may not do the job?

I'm presuming some sort of filter would be required?

I'm taking a trip south in a few days and want to get the most photo wise out of my trip.

 

[Big Mike]

What steps you would you take if you were shooting into the sun and wanted to illuminate, say, a large field or mountain... or some sort of scenery where I flash may not do the job?

You need to consider the dynamic range of the scene and what you camera is capable of. If you are shooting into the sun, it will be extremely brighter than anything else, especially a landscape. Typically, you would need to decide which parts of the scene are more important to you, and expose for that...leaving other parts to be blown out or lost in shadow.

You can use a split or graduated filter to block some light from the brighter part of the scene. Landscape photographers have been using these filters for a long time. They work great when the horizon is fairly flat, but not so well with mountains etc. It's better to use square filters for this, rather than round, so that you can control where the split/grad is.

Another thing you can do, is to take multiple shots at different exposures. This way you can exposure for the different parts of the scene. You can then use software to combine the images and take the parts that you want. There are some 'automated' processes for this, and it's often called HDR (high dynamic range). Or you could just manually cut out/mask off the parts that you want.

 

[gsgary]

When i went on a Canon fill flash coarse some years ago they said the best way to use the Canon 430ex/580ex ect in very bright light was to shoot on program
This shot was actually shot mid day in bright light i tried to make it look like early evening but use a bit too much flash, i underexposed the sky by about 2 stops

 

[confused_in_the_darkroom]

what about takin two pictures if you have time? take a picture exposed to the person and then one to the sky, then ps it together?

 

[ksmattfish]

To help get the shutter speed down if you don't have high speed sync use a polarizer and/or ND. Even with high speed sync I use a pol for outdoor portraits. I haven't figured out how to make color like that in Photoshop.

I can't remember where I saw it, Strobist.com or someplace, but there was a cool demonstration of a 3 flash set-up for bright light, outdoor portraits. There was a flash on each side of the subject set to normal exposure, and a flash on the camera set to -2 stops. The camera itself was set to -1 stop. So it slightly underexposes the background, and the on camera flash adds the fill. It was a slick look.