Winter Sports Photography Tips - Flash Compensation
This guest post with a couple of tips on Winter Sports Photography is by Yves Garneau from G1Photo.com.
Conveying the mood of a particular setting with tricky lighting can be difficult. Most of my photography is done in the mountains during the winter months where light can vary from rich and deep to flat and blown out. Having the proper techniques to handle these varied lighting situations is a must.
Here you’ll find one of my favorite shots from last winter.
We’d just finished a heli ski run in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia, Canada and were waiting for the heli to pick us up. The sun was just about to set when I decided to grab these photos of my ski model.
I needed to keep my subject lit up with out over exposing the back drop. Most of you probably recognize the fill-flash but in this case it needed some tweaking to give the sun that starry effect. No filters were used….
I was shooting with a Nikon D200 and 10.5mm fisheye lens. Most of the time I keep my camera on shutter priority. With action I need to be assured my photos are crisp therefore I always have it set to a minimum shutter speed of 1/1250sec. When I pulled out my camera and popped up the built in flash it automatically dropped the shutter speed to 1/250sec and boost the aperture to F14.
Although this would light my subject appropriately I was concerned about getting the deep blue sky and starry sun. The burst of flash would also need tweaking based on how close he was standing. For the first shot I dropped my exposure by a third of a stop and upped my flash by a third of a stop. This would compensate for the distance between my subject and me while staying true to the setting.
For the second shot I kept my exposure dropped by a third but also dropped the flash by a third of a stop since he was much closer. The result is an evenly balanced shot with an incredible starry sun.
I love using fill flash while shooting against the sun but it isn’t always as straight forward as popping up the flash and shooting. Don’t be afraid to tweak the flash compensation settings to get that perfect balance… that’s what it’s there for.
Thanks to Yves for this post. He’s kindly offered to write a few more Winter Photography Tips for DPS. Don’t forget to check out more of his work at G1Photo.com. Subscribe today to get notified when he posts more.
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January 31st, 2008 at 12:52 am
No filters and such sky… impressive.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:08 am
I love the starry sun effect!
January 31st, 2008 at 1:34 am
Brilliant. Great exposure and a very well balanced snap.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:30 am
I saw a picture last week that had a similar effect and had me COMPLETELY baffled. A friend and I conjectured that ND filters and extremely small apertures had been used, but this really clears things up. THANK YOU - that was really bugging me!
January 31st, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Wow! I love these pictures! I’ve been into photographing skiing and mountaineering since 1997 and I have always had troubles with sunlight. This was a helpful tip for me, thanks!
January 31st, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Wow, great light balance in this shot. I love how the sun looks. Thanks for posting this.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:26 am
Love the starry effect of the sun. Excellent. Did you have problems with lens flare while shooting directly at the sun?
February 1st, 2008 at 12:43 am
This shot is awesome, i’m about to leave on a snowboard trip to WY, any suggestions on protecting my expensive camera from myself on the slopes?
February 1st, 2008 at 1:29 am
Relly nice picture. The colours are brilliant!
February 1st, 2008 at 2:14 am
These pictures are great. I’m not sure I understand the starry sun. I can’t see that the fill in flash does anything for the sun. In which case is it only starry because you’ve shot straight into it? I’ve seen effects like this with tiny apertures (but F9 doesn’t seem so small to me). Or have I missed the point? Anyway, the images are just amazing and I like the texture of the snow. Makes me want to visit Canada!
February 1st, 2008 at 4:34 am
I like the first image, but, for me, the man’s face on the second is over-lit and comes off “wrong”.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:51 am
Very useful and Helpful. Thanks.
Martin
February 1st, 2008 at 9:10 am
that’s a great post, I’ve been trying to get some good winter shots for my stock photo portfolio for a while and this will really help.
February 2nd, 2008 at 3:08 am
I have used fill flash many times with good results(outdoors). I don’t think I can change the settings on my flash.I will go home and read my manual.
I am learning all kinds of helpful things on this site..thank you.
February 10th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Great shots and tips!
But one question, how do I tweak my flash settings? I have a Canon 10D and a Speedlite 420EX flash.