How to use fill flash & daylight With Daniel Norton
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Our studios are notorious for its perfect natural light condition. This pearl allures many photographers who like to work with no strobes, as it is perceived to be more difficult to master. Yet, sometimes the sun is to harsh on shadows and you want that second light to help out from other side, right?
Today we will explore the technique of using the strobe as the fill light to aid our light balance when shooting with natural light as the key light. With Daniel Norton and Adorama TV let’s see who it is done.
Before the strobe is on.
Daniel has his camera set to shutter speed 1/250 and F stop at 10. He is only shooting with natural light. The flash is off.
After a quick test shot it is obvious that the light on the model is far from ideal. It is very directional, with dark shadows.
It is time to turn on the soft box light!
Tuning the strobe.
For this tutorial Daniel is using Chimera Pro II small Lightbank for the soft box and profoto B1X for the strobe.
This light will be use only as the fill flash. That means, this light is not going to overpower the ambient light and make it look really dramatic. Instead, used as fill light, it will lit up nicely the model from the other side, yet still looking natural.
To tune the strobe, Daniel is going to use his favorite Sekonic LiteMaster Pro L-478D-U Light Meter, to measure the sun light intensity and then match the intensity of the strobe to match the F stop as close as he can.
In this example, the light meter on the ambient light at 1/250 shutter speed show F8.
After matching the strobe light, the light meter shows F8.5 on the fill side which is a good balance.
Now it is time to shoot.
Perfecting the light.
Usually meters can get you a good balance. But your eye can make it perfect! Try to play with going up or down the stop to see how it plays out. In this example Daniel has a few tries and chooses best to his liking.
Watch the full tutorial video of David Bergman for Adorama TV here: