What am I doing wrong " over powering the sun "

[Mark_Oehler]

Do you have a shot of the tree with the meter's reading with no flash?

Mark

[cifcap]

He used some pretty powerful lighting gear to match the sun. Hensel Portys are sweet indeed, but pricey. Then again you need the power to pull off shots like those.

[That_Look_Photo]

Originally Posted by cifcap

He used some pretty powerful lighting gear to match the sun. Hensel Portys are sweet indeed, but pricey. Then again you need the power to pull off shots like those.

I checked the exlf data on one of his images. He shot it at f13 and 1/200th of a sec. I am going out now and do the test over..

[rolandogomez]

The first problem, you shot right into a dark background which was probably less than F/16, remember, you care capturing "reflected" light from your background. If you point your meter to the sky, the Sunny 16 rule applies, but that doesn't mean your background is reflecting at F/16, it may actually be F/11 or less.

Meters are starting points based on 18-percent gray, ever seen anyone with 18-percent gray skin color? If I use a meter, I then mentally apply the 90-percent rule to make adjustments. What is pure black is going to absorb 90-percent of the light that hits it, what is pure white will reflect 90-percent of the light that hits it. In this case, your background, with green leaves is absorbing more light.

Now, additionally, your background, when shooting outdoors, is affected by ambient light, thus your shutter-speed will control the darkness/lightness of the background--the shutter speed for your subject is the duration of the flash, the tree is affected by it in this case, but not your "far away" background.

Additionally, you probably were using an incidental light meter measuring light falling on your subject, not a reflectance light meter which measures reflected light.

Finally, if I'm going to overpower the sun with flash, I incorporate more sky in my scene (see images below). Just my two centavos. Thanks for being a part of the G1 family and community, rg sends!

Re: What am I doing wrong " over powering the sun " 

Re: What am I doing wrong " over powering the sun " 

Re: What am I doing wrong " over powering the sun " 

Re: What am I doing wrong " over powering the sun " 

Re: What am I doing wrong " over powering the sun " 

[rolandogomez]

Here is an image where I used the sun, to overpower itself (face only), in a sense, because the mirror in the image reflected natural sunlight into the model's face which was reflecting less light than the mirror--all done with natural light, and if you want to see the story on what caused the image originally, here's the link: http://rolandogomez.net/2008/10/obse...eads-to-photo/

Thanks, rg sends!

Overpowering the sun without flash example... 

[Studio 9 West]

Originally Posted by That_Look_Photo

I metered right in front with the meter set on ambient light. The sun is normaly at f16 just as it metered. I then set it back to flash metering and set the camera f18 and set the flash to meter at f18. Now that I have thought about it. I never checked the exposure with out the flash with the camera. That should have let me see what the background would look like.

Hey Mike,

Its michael in clearwater man. Been a while since I was on here. Give me a call at 727-504-3682. We can get together one day and I can teach you this in about 5 minuets.......

[photosbyharout]

what is your ISO/ASA set at?

[kjtw]

Meter the ambient light and, as Rolando mentioned, incorporate more sky into the shot (it gives a more stunning effect). Also, I have found that (if you can do it), making your flash one stop brighter than abient creates a good effect (ie if ambient is f/16 shoot it @ f/22).

I would show you some examples of what I have gotten doing it this way, but I am at work right now and don't have access to my photos...

[kgphoto]

It would help to notice in the examples you were trying to emulate, that the entire scene was in full sun and the model's back was to the sun making her backlit so all you had to do was fill her shadow side.

[jimmyd]

Kinda what RG said in that you simply didn't choose too appropriate of a location to shoot something where overpowering the sun was your goal. The only thing you overpowered was the shade. And you overpowered that by quite a bit... which really didn't take that much light to accomplish. Get out in the sunlight and kick that sun's ass!

B&W conversion aside, this was shot with mid-day sunlit sky behind them about two weeks ago for Hustler/LFP: Canon 5D w/70-200 f/4L, f/16 @ 200, front lit, from either side, with a couple of strobes.