Balancing Flash and Ambient Light

[APhotoSchool]

In your face flash can look great and has it’s own use, but the real pros will balance their flashes with the ambient light. What this means is that they create an image in which the viewer doesn’t instantly know that the lighting is artificial on the subject.

Correctly used flash is what will set your work above the rest, and help establish your images as “professional”. Flash is not always a necessity, but more often than not a bit of fill will make an image look significantly better. Keep in mind that we are saying, “correctly used flash” …this is key! If you overexpose the flash it can make an image look terrible and set your image to “amateur” status.

So how do you find a balance between the flash and ambient light? Well, at Action Photo School, we prefer to use a method we call “building the light.” Essentially, we use several steps beginning with ambient light exposure to create a well-balanced shot.



First, build up the ambient exposure to where you would like it if you were not using flash. Try to retain a shutter speed of 1/320th, or 1/250th for flash sync by compensating using ISO and aperture (Shutter speeds above that will cause the flash to not cover the bottom of the image). The smaller the aperture and ISO, the more the flash will have to be powered up to create the image. Shutter speed will not affect the power of the flash, aperture will! Remember that!

Once you have a great ambient exposure, it’s time to flip on the flash. Turn the flash on and take a test shot. If you are using radios then it’s likely you are in manual mode. If this is the case, keep adjusting power and taking test shots to see how the flash looks with the ambient. If the flash is over-powering, tone it down a bit. Can’t see it? Crank it up.

It’s also helpful to take this same approach even if you are in TTL mode. Often times in broad daylight this setting won’t power the flash enough, compensate for this by cranking up the TTL menu exposure for the flash.



One of the best tricks for checking the exposure is by setting your camera to display “highlights” on the screen. This way, if the flash is overexposed, you will see the subject blinking when you review the image on screen. Lower the flash down quite a bit if this is the case. Here’s an article with more information on that.

This approach may seem extremely simple, but it's easy to forget. Always build up your shots with ambient first, then by adding flashes one at a time until you have mastered the technique. Now go get some sick (and perfectly-balanced) shots!



Authors Connor Walberg and Daniel Milchev are both published professional action photographers, and together run Action Photo School. A website dedicated to teaching all aspects of action photography. Whether you’re an established action photographer, or just starting to shoot action, Action Photo School is the place for you!

[RichardTaylor]

Thanks for the tutorial. Much appreciated.

[autofocus]

Thanks, very helpful and informative

[APhotoSchool]

Thanks! Glad we could help!

[daremekiddy]

Very useful tutorial. Great shots too.

[SJCT]

I really need to practice this. Was attempting some outdoor shots on the weekend with my daughter in a swing set and was trying to use the flash in my hot shoe to fill in some of the shadows. I kept blowing out the shot and eventually gave up (and went back to pushing my daughter in the swing). Thanks for the tutorial though, it's helped a lot!

[MOmilkman]

Nice article guys!

[APhotoSchool]

Thanks MOmilkman!

[RecurrentNerve]

So you could essentially put the camera in Shutter Priority, set it to 1/250th (or whatever the sync speed is), then adjust the ISO until you get the light reading you want, allowing the camera to set the aperture, then kick in with the flash?

[Chip]

Very nice tutorial. And photos.

Thanks.